
THIRTY YEA 
'he FRON 











^ 




Reserve Storagt 
Collectioa 




Class. 



Book__ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



B 




a; 
be 
a 
a 



ID 

13 



•T3 

O 
O 

■M 

o 

■<-> 

T? 

<u 

to 
O 

u 

H 



Thirty Years on 
The Frontier 



• •••U JL •••• 

ROBERT McREYNOLDS, 

AUTHOR OF 

''Rodney WilkeSy" ''The Luxury of Poverty,'' "A 

Modern Jean Valjean,** "Facts and Fancies." 



EL PASO PUBLISHING CO. 

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. 

1906 

Copyricrht, 1006. 

By Robert Mc Reynolds. 



Ui-HARY of CONGRESS 


IwoGooies Keceived 


AUG 2h i906 


Copyr'.T'i' Pntry 

CLAS-^/rt '•-•'vc. No. 

CO»^Y A, 



C<rpy 



2^ 



Copyright hy 

EOEERT McReYNOLDS. 

1906. 



To 

Louis Taliafeeko, 

Colorado- Springs, 

Colorado, 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



They Crossed the Gila at Flood Tide. 
We Saw Smoke Signals. 

Battlefield at Wounded Knee. 

General George A. Custer. 

Captain Jack Crawford. 

After the Fight. 

Chief Big Foot. 

Pueblo de Taos. 

After the Blizzard at Wounded Knee. 

Truer Hearts I Never Expect to Find. 

Gathering Up the Dead at Wounded Knee. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER. PAGE. 

I. In Days of Innocence 1 

II. Out for a Fortune 9 

III. Black Hills Days 16 

IV. The Custer Massacre 21 

V. The Shadow Scout 31 

VI. Indian Fight in Colorado 39 

VII. A Cow Boy Duel 47 

VIII. Pleasant Half acre 's Revenge 53 

IX. Capturing Wild Horses 63 

X. An Expedition That Failed 72 

XI. Across the Palm Desert 79 

XII. The Last Stand of a Dying Race ... 87 

XIII. The Tragedy of the Lost Mine .... 98 

XIV. The Land of the Fair God 107 

XV. Outlawry in Oklahoma 115 

XVI. A New Land of Canaan 125 

XVII. Told Around the Camp Fire 134 

XVIII. The Lone Grave on the Mesa .... 141 

XIX. Under the Black Flag 148 

XX. In Cuban Jungles 156 

XXI. Emulous of Washington 164 



CHAPTER. PAGE. 

XXII. On the Round Up 169 

XXIII. The Egypt of America 179 

XXIV. In the Dome of the Sky 190 

XXV. Where Nature is at her Best 197 

XXVI. When the West was New 207 



Thirty Years on the Frontier 



1 



IN DAYS OF INNOCENCE. 

In the following pages I shall tell of much 
personal experience as well as important in- 
cidents which have come under my observa- 
tion during thirty years on the frontier. As 
a cowboy, miner and pioneer, I have partici- 
pated in many exciting events, none of which, 
however, caused me the prolonged grief that 
a certain bombshell affair did when I was a 
boy, resulting in a newspaper experience and 
habit of telling things, and eventually led to 
my coming West. 

My grandfather's plantation in Kentucky 
and nearly opposite the town of Newburgh, 
on the Indiana side, was as much my home as 
was my mother's. She being a widow and 
having my brother and sister to care for, as 



Z THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

well as myself, felt a relief from the responsi- 
bility of looking after me when I was at my 
grandfather's home. 

The plantation faced the Ohio Eiver, the 
wooded part of which had been a camping 
ground for rebel soldiers, until they were 
driven out by the shells of a Yankee gunboat. 
While hunting pecans in these woods one day, 
I stumbled on to an unexploded bombshell, 
and, boylike, I wanted to see the thing go off. 
However, I was afraid to touch it until I had 
counseled with the Woods boys, whose father 
was a renter of a small tract of ground below 
the plantation. That night the three of us 
met and decided to explode the shell the fol- 
lowing Sunday morning, after the folks had 
gone to church. I feigned a headache when 
grandmother wanted to take me in the car- 
riage with them to church, but when I was 
satisfied they were well down the road, I hur- 
ried to the strip of forest a mile away, where 
the Woods boys were waiting. They had 
come in a rickety old buggy drawn by a white 
mule. It was in autumn and as the leaves 
were dry on the ground, we were afraid to 
kindle a fire, and decided to take the shell 
near the tobacco barn, around which we could 



THIKTY YEAKS ON THE FKONTIER. 6 

hide and watch it go off. Neither of the boys 
would handle it, so I lifted it into the buggy ; 
then they were afraid to ride with it, and it 
was left to me to lead the mule to the tobacco 
barn. I hitched the animal to a sapling near 
the barn, while the other boys gathered up 
some kindling, and we made a pile of old 
fence posts, and when I had laid the shell 
upon the log heap, we lit the kindling with a 
match and all ran behind the barn, forgetting 
all about the mule. The wood was dry and 
was soon all aflame. Every little while one 
of us would peek around the corner to see if 
the thing was not about ready to explode. We 
were getting impatient, when the mule gave 
a great ^^hee haw" that called our attention 
to his peril. It was his last ' ' hee haw, ' ' for in 
a second more the bomb exploded with a 
deafening noise, and fragments of the shell 
screamed like a panther in the air. We ran 
around to see the result of the explosion, and 
behold! it had spread that mule all over the 
side of the barn. 

The things my grandfather said and did to 
me when he returned from church does not 
concern the public. But when he had fin- 
ished, I was fully convinced that I was all to 



4 THIBTY YEAKS ON THE FEONTIER. 

blame, and that I owed Mr. Woods $150 for 
his demolished mule. 

Then followed long lectures from my moth- 
er and grandmother, and to add to my dis- 
comfiture was Mr. Woods' lamentations and 
his expressed regrets that it was not me, in- 
stead of his mule, that was blown up. 

I was the owner of an old musket with 
which I spent most of my time hunting rab- 
bits, using small slugs of lead for shot, which 
I chopped up with a hatchet. Two weeks be- 
fore the bombshell episode, I had found a 
musket-ball, and I concluded to try a man's 
load in the gun on my next rabbit ; I poured 
in a full charge of powder, but when I came 
to ram the ball home, it would go only half 
way down the barrel. I was afraid to shoot 
then, lest the gun might burst, and as I 
could neither get the ball out or farther down, 

I laid the barrel between two Jogs, tied a 
string to the trigger, and got behind a stump 
and pulled it off. 

A few minutes later while I was examining 
my gun, grandfather came running out of the 
potato patch to find who was shooting at him. 
However, he was so thankful that matters 



THIRTY YEARS OK THE FRONTIER. 5 

were not worse, that I got off with a slight 
reprimand. 

But this Sunday capped the climax. A 
council of my kinfolks was held that night, 
and decided that neither man nor beast was 
safe on that plantation if I remained. Their 
final verdict was that I should be sent to my 
mother's home in Newburgh, and there to 
learn the printer's trade, attend Frederick 
Dickerman's night school, be made to pay for 
the mule, and my musket confiscated. I was 
paid $3 a week as printer's devil to start 
with, one dollar of which I might spend for 
my clothes, fifty cents for tuition in the night 
school, one dollar and twenty-five cents for 
the mule debt, and the other twenty-five cents 
I might spend. 

Grandfather was very careful to see that I 
saved the mule money, and I used to think he 
took a special delight in collecting it from 
mother, to whom I paid it every week. 

It took me nearly three years in that print- 
ing office to get out of debt. I was now 
eighteen years of age. 

Life in the printing office was too monoto- 
nous ; I wanted a more exciting scene of ac- 
tion. I used to watch the great river steam- 



6 THiKTY tEAKS ON THE FEOKTiEfi. 

ers come and go, and wondered if I could hold 
any kind of a position on one of them, except 
carrying freight, when by accident one day 
there came an opportunity. The steamer 
^'Dick Johnson'' was lying at the wharf load- 
ing hogsheads of tobacco, when the freight 
clerk was injured by a fall of the stage plank. 
The captain wanted someone to take his 
place, and my schoolmaster recommended 
me. Here was a chance to put in practice the 
bookkeeping I had studied under him. It was 
what I wanted — I could now get a glimpse of 
the outside world. 

The position on the ^^Dick Johnson'' was a 
stepping-stone, for in another year I was the 
mate of the steamer ^^Rapidan," plying be- 
tween Florence, Alabama, and Evansville, 
Indiana, and had thirty negroes under my 
control. 

It was historic country through which we 
passed. The trees on the islands near Pitts- 
burgh Landing yet showed signs of shot and 
shell fired by federal gunboats. Ofttimes 
some passenger who had been a participant 
on one side or the other at Shiloh, would en- 
tertain his listeners for hours with stories of 



THIRTY YEARS OJT THE FRONTIER. 7 

the fight, until some of us younger officers 
became imbued with the war spirit. 

The autumn of 1875 had come when yellow 
fever broke out aboard our boat, and we lay 
in quarantine two miles below Savannah, 
Tennessee, for a month. I stayed with the 
boat until we were released, and then went to 
my home in Newburgh, ill with malarial 
fever. 

Stories of rich gold finds in the Northwest 
had been circulated through the newspapers, 
and one day I resolved to try my luck. The 
things we believe we are doing for the last 
time, always cause a pang of sorrow, and as I 
packed my valise on Sunday afternoon to 
leave forever the home of childhood, my feel- 
ings can be better imagined than described. 
My grandparents came over from their Ken- 
tucky home to bid me good-bye. When I was 
ready to start, grandfather took from his 
pocket a roll of bills, and placing them in my 
hands, said: ''Here, Mackey, is your mule 
money, and I have added interest enough to 
make the sum total $500. I paid Mr. Woods 
for his mule, but I wanted to teach you a les- 
son. Profit by it, and make good use of the 
money, and say, Mackey, whatever you do in 



S THIRTY YEAES OiT THE FRONTIER. 

life, never insult a blind man, never strike a 
cripple and never marry a fool. ' ' 

It was the last time I ever saw the noble 
old guardian of my youth. The first two of 
his parting injunctions I have religiously 
obeyed. 



II. 



OUT FOR A FORTUNE. 



My first view of the Nebraska plains was 
the next morning after leaving Omaha, and I 
thought I never saw anything half so grand. 
The February sun threw its beams aslant the 
mighty sea of plain over which so many white 
covered wagons had toiled on their way to the 
then wild regions of the West. 

Small herds of buffalo and antelope were 
frequently seen from the car windows; the 
passengers fired at them and often wounded 
an antelope, which limped away in a vain at- 
tempt to join its mates. That night we wit- 
nessed the mighty spectacle of the plains on 
fire. The huge, billowy waves of flame 
leaped high against a darkened sky, and 
swept with hiss and roar along the banks of 
the shallow Platte. The emigrant train upon 
which I was aboard was crowded with people 
of all sorts. Many of them were homeseekers 



10 THIRTY Years Oir the i^rontiek. 

on their way to Oregon and California, while 
not a few adventurers like myself were bound 
for the Black Hills. A young man who went 
under the name of Soapy Wyatte, was work- 
ing the train on a three-card monte game, 
and was very successful until he cheated a 
couple of ranchmen out of quite a sum of 
money. Then they organized the other losers, 
and were in the act of hanging him with the 
bell rope when he disgorged his ill-gotten 
gains and paid back the money. Men of his 
class were plentiful, but as a rule they were 
careful not to cheat the frontiersman, for 
when they did they usually got the worst of 
it. 

Cheyenne at that time was a typical fron- 
tier town. Gambling houses, saloons and 
dance halls were open continuously, night 
and day. Unlucky indeed was the tenderfoot 
who fell into their snare. I soon secured 
transportation with a mule-train for Dead- 
wood. There were thirty-three of us in the 
party. The wagons were heavily loaded 
with freight and the trail was in frightful 
condition; we ofttimes were compelled to 
walk. 

I had bought a heavy pair of boots for the 



^MIKTY YtAKS ON THE .l^RONTlEH. 11 

trip, but the sticky alkali mud made them so 
heavy that I soon cut off the tops. The next 
thing, I put my Winchester rifle and revol- 
ver in the wagon and then trudged along the 
best I could. The Sioux Indians were on the 
warpath and it was dangerous to get far 
away from the wagon train. Almost every 
freighter we met warned us against Eed 
Canyon. The stage drivers reported ^'hold 
ups" and murders by organized bands of 
road agents. This kept us on the alert. At 
night there was a detail of eight, to divide up 
the night in standing guard. These men were 
selected from the most experienced plains- 
men, of whom there were quite a number 
with us. 

We were eight days out from Cheyenne, 
and several inches of snow had fallen during 
the night, but the sun rose clear on the biting 
cold of the morning. Suddenly we heard 
shots ahead. ''Indians! Indians !'' shouted 
one driver to another and then the wagons 
were quickly formed in a circle, the mules be- 
ing unhitched and brought to the center of 
the circle. 

Then for the first time I saw the hideous 
forms of a band of half-naked savages 



12 THIRTY YEARS OK THE FRONTIER. 

mounted on their ponies in the distance. 
They were galloping in a circle around us, 
yelling their war cry, ^'Hi-yi, Hip-yi, yi.'' 
They fell from their horses before the deadly 
aim of our men; their bullets came like the 
angry hum of hornets about our heads. Their 
numbers increased from over the foothills, 
whence they first came. There was a look of 
desperation upon the faces of our men, such 
as pen can not describe. James Morgan, who 
was standing near me in the act of reloading 
his Winchester, suddenly fell nerveless to 
the ground. Our captain's voice rang out 
now and then, ^ ^ Be careful there, boys ; take 
good aim before you fire.*' Two Indians 
circled nearer than the others. They were 
lying on their horses' necks and firing at us 
while they were at full gallop. I took aim at 
one and fired; others must have done so at 
the same time, for both of them fell from 
their horses. The fight lasted perhaps an 
hour, when the Indians withdrew to the hills. 
One of our men lay dead and two were 
wounded. I went to where the two Indians 
had fallen. There lay their forms, cold and 
stiff in death. The sunbeams were slanting 
over those snow covered hills. I felt an un- 



THIBTY YEARS ON THE FEONTIER. 13 

accountable terror as I looked upon them and 
the crimson snow which their life blood had 
stained. The raw north wind seemed to 
pierce my very heart. Night was coming on, 
and with it all the horrors of uncertainty. I 
lingered about the spot for some time, with 
a dreadful fascination mingled with terror. 
Human life had perished there ; human souls 
had gone into the uncertainty of an unknown 
beyond. With my brain reeling with excite- 
ment of the day and sickened in heart, I re- 
turned to our wagons, where some of us 
walked outside the circle throughout the long 
watches of that wintry night. 

Wlien the morning sun rose clear above 
the snow-covered hills, we wrapped the body 
of the dead teamster in his blankets, and 
again took up the toilsome drive. The In- 
dians had retired from the fight, probably 
for the reason that they saw another outfit 
of wagons coming far down on the plain. 
The wagons overtook us about 9 o'clock, and 
after that we had no more trouble with In- 
dians. 

Deadwood, at that time, was like all the 
frontier mining towns. Saloons, gambling 
houses and dance halls comprised the busi- 



■*i. 



14 THIKTY YEAKS ON" THE FRONTIEE. 

ness of the place. The gulch was dotted with 
miners' cabins and dug-outs. There were a 
few stores, restaurants, and a bank, but as 
yet the town had not started a " regular '^ 
graveyard. The news of our fight soon 
spread up and down the gulch and many 
were the willing hands that offered their 
services in the burial of James Morgan, our 
teamster. They dug his grave on the hill- 
side, where afterwards more than five thou- 
sand men were buried. They either fell from 
the deadly pneumonia, or from the bullets 
of each other in quarrels. Wlien Morgan's 
grave was ready to be filled, some one sug- 
gested that a chapter from the Bible should 
be read, but none of us knew where to ask 
for one, in all Deadwood. Presently a boy 
said, ^ ^ I will find one, * ' and he soon returned 
with a young lady, who proved to be his sis- 
ter. He handed the book to our bronzed cap- 
tain of the mule train; he shook his head. 
Then someone asked her to read it. When 
she began, those grim frontiersmen bared 
their heads, and I fancied I saw the tears 
gather on more than one bronzed cheek as 
she knelt upon the frozen clay and offered up 
a prayer for the dead teamster's soul. 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 15 

The adventurous spirits from far and wide 
were flocking to this new Eldorado. Wild 
Bill, the famous scout, Captain Jack Craw- 
ford, Texas Jack, and other equally noted 
scouts and Indian fighters, were there. They 
sought gold and adventure alike, only for the 
pleasure it would bring. 



III. 



BLACK HILLS DAYS. 



I knew Doc Kiimie was not a civil engi- 
neer, but lie had a plan which looked good, 
and as I was almost broke, I consented to 
help him work it. There was a horseshoe 
bend in the creek which might be drained for 
placer mining by tunneling through in a 
narrow place. I talked up the project with 
some of the boys, and they agreed to dig the 
tunnel while Doc did the civil engineering. 
Day after day they dug and blasted rock, 
while Doc stood around looking wise and en- 
couraging the work. In about a month they 
were practically through to the other side of 
the creek. Then they began to call for Doc's 
measurements and calculations. ^^ Never 
mind, you are not through yet,'' he would 
say, ^'I will let you know when to stop dig- 
ging. ' ' 

^'But we can hear the water rushing,'' 
they would say. 




General George A. Custer (page 21). 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 17 

^^You fellows can't tell anything about it. 
Sounds of rushing water are always carried 
a long distance by rocks.'' 

"But we are not in the rocks now, we are 
in a clay bank. ' ' 

"Clay does the same thing; keep on dig- 
ging. ' ' 

Two days later and there was a commotion 
at the lower end of the tunnel, when a full 
head of water came rushing out, bearing with 
it men, wheelbarrows and shovels. They were 
nearly drowned, and half frozen, when they 
scrambled out of the creek. Mad as hornets, 
they sought their civil engineer, but he was 
nowhere to be found. The work was done. 
The prospects were good. When their 
clothes were dried and they had eaten dinner, 
they laughed over the incident and par- 
doned Doc's miscalculation. With pan and 
rocker, we now began to work the dry horse- 
shoe bend. Nuggets weighing an ounce, and 
from that on down to the size of a pin head, 
were found. The fellows were honest, and 
made an even divide all around at the clean- 
up each night. In two months we had taken 
out over $6,000, and then sold the claim to a 
placer mining company for $18,000 in cash — 



18 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

$3,000 apiece for the six of us. In two 
months we were all broke; the money had 
gone into wildcat speculation in mines. But 
who cared f Were the hills not full of gold, 
and all to be had for the digging? 

I joined a party who went thirty miles to 
the northwest in search of new diggings, and 
the most that came of it was a laughable in- 
cident. 

The great hills rose on every side, frown- 
ing darkly in the dense forest of pine. Our 
voices echoed from rock to rock, as we sat 
one noon-day about our campfire, talking of 
possible finds, when, bareheaded, with hair 
disheveled, blood flowing from a wound in 
his face, and a wildcat held to his chest in 
close embrace, Mark Witherspoon rushed 
into camp, yelling at the top of his voice. He 
was prospecting in a ravine a mile distant, 
when he saw something waving in the under- 
brush. Thinking it was mountain grouse, he 
advanced in hope of getting a shot, when a 
huge wildcat sprang at his throat. 

As the forepaws of the animal struck his 
chest, he let fall his gun, and hugged the 
beast with all his strength to his chest with 
both arms. The head of the wildcat was 



THIBTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 19 

drawn slightly backward by the tense pres- 
sure of his arms upon its back, while the 
claws were rendered practically powerless 
by the close embrace. So quick had been 
Witherspoon's action at the start, that he 
received only a slight wound on the face. In 
this predicament, he started on a run for the 
camp. He did not dare to let go and the 
wildcat wouldn't, so both held fast. The cat 
glared up fiercely at him with its yellow 
eyes, while its hot breath came into his face 
at every leap. Whenever the vicious beast 
made the slightest struggle, Witherspoon 
hugged the tighter, fearing at every step he 
might stumble and the deadly teeth be fixed 
in his throat. 

In this manner he reached camp, and it 
was some seconds before he could make us 
understand that the cat was terribly alive, 
and that he was not holding it because he 
wanted to, or racing for the sake of the exer- 
cise. Finally one of the men despatched the 
animal with his revolver, and, to Wither- 
spoon 's inexpressible relief, the dead beast 
dropped from his arms. Before the boys got 
through telling the story afterwards, they 



20 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

made it out that Witlierspoon had run nine 
miles with the wildcat. 

Soon after our return to Deadwood, a man 
in an almost fainting condition came into 
town and announced that his companion had 
either been killed or captured by the Indians. 
A party was organized and was led by Wild 
Bill. It was not long before we came upon a 
scene that told what the poor fellow's fate 
had been, much plainer than words are able 
to portray. We found his blackened trunk 
fastened to a tree with rawhide thongs, while 
all around were evidences of the great tor- 
ture which had been inflicted ere the fagots 
had been lighted. 

When brought face to face with this, I 
stowed two cartridges safely away in my 
vest pocket, resolved to suicide rather than 
to fall into the hands of such miscreants. 
Then came the news of the Custer massacre. 
For many days afterward we patrolled the 
mountain tops, and kept bivouac fires lighted 
by night, as signals. 



IV. 



THE CUSTER MASSACRE. 

The arrival at Fort Lincoln, on the Mis- 
souri River, of a party of Indians in 1874, 
who offered gold dust for sale, was the be- 
ginning of the cause that led to the great 
Sioux war in 1876, in which General Custer 
and his devoted soldiers were massacred on 
the Little Big Horn River on the 25th day of 
June of that year. 

The gold which the Indians brought to 
Fort Lincoln, they said came from the Black 
Hills, where the gulches abounded with the 
yellow dust. The consequent rush of white 
men into that region was, in fact, a violation 
of the treaty of 1867, when Congress sent out 
four civilians and three army officers as 
peace commissioners, who gave to the old 
Dakota tribes, as the Sioux were then called, 
the vast area of land bounded on the south 
by Nebraska, on the east by the Missouri 



22 THIKTY YEARS ON THE FRONTlEtS. 

Eiver, on the west by the 104th Meridian, 
and on the north by the 46th Parallel. They 
had the absolute pledge of the United States 
that they should be protected in the peace- 
able possession of the country set aside for 
them. This territory was as large as the 
state of Michigan, and of its interior little or 
nothing was known except to a few hardy 
traders and trappers prior to 1874. 

With the advent of the gold seekers in 
1875 the Indians saw that the greedy en- 
croachments of the white man were but faint- 
ly resisted by the United States government, 
and that sooner or later it meant the total 
occupation of their country, and their own 
annihilation, and so with the traditional 
wrongs of their forefathers ever in mind, 
they determined to make a stand for their 
rights. 

The scene of General Terry's campaign 
against these Indians lay between the Big 
Horn and Powder Eivers, and extended from 
the Big Horn Mountains northerly to beyond 
the Yellowstone Eiver. A region barren and 
desolate, volcanic, broken and ofttimes al- 
most impassable, jagged and precipitous 
cliffs, narrow and deep arroyas filled with 



THIRTY YEARS OlSf THE FROlSTTIER. 23 

massive boulders, alkali water for miles, veg- 
etation of cactus and sagebrush — all these 
represent feebly the country where Custer 
was to contend against the most powerful, 
warlike and best armed body of savages on 
the American continent. 

An army in this trackless waste was at 
that time at the mercy of guides and scouts. 
The sun rose in the east and shone all day 
upon a vast expanse of sagebrush and grass 
and as it set in the west cast its dull rays 
into a thousand ravines that neither man nor 
beast could cross ; to go north or south could 
only be decided by personal effort. An in- 
significant turn to the wrong side of a little 
knoll or buffalo wallow would ofttimes lead 
the scout into ravine after ravine, or over 
bluff after bluff, until at last he would stand 
on the edge of a yawning canon, hundreds of 
feet in depth and with perpendicular walls. 
Nothing was left for him to do but to retrace 
his steps and find an accessible route. 

Custer had been ordered by General Terry 
to proceed with his command, numbering 28 
officers and 747 soldiers, up the Eosebud 
River, and if the trail of the Indians was not 
found at a given point, to then follow the 



24 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

course of the Little Big Horn. These in- 
structions were followed, and on the 24th of 
June he turned westerly toward the Little 
Big Horn, where a large Indian village was 
discovered some fifteen miles distant. The 
trail they were on led down the stream at a 
point south of the villages. Major Reno with 
three companies was ordered to follow the 
trail, cross the stream and charge down its 
north bank, while Captain F. W. Benteen 
was sent with three companies to make a de- 
tour south of Reno. 

The point where the little armies separated, 
many of their men never to meet again, the 
river wound its silvery course for miles in 
the narrow valley as far as the eye could 
reach; its banks were fringed with the elm 
and Cottonwood, whose foliage hid from view 
a thousand Indian tepees beyond the river. 
Sharp eyes had noted the advancing col- 
umns, and quick brains had already begun to 
plan their destruction. 

That night the three divisions made a si- 
lent bivouac beneath the stars which must 
have looked down like pitying eyes. 

In the grey light of the morning, and with 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 25 

noiseless call to boots and saddles, they were 
stealing on toward the foe. 

Reno proceeded to the river and crossed it, 
charged down its west banks and met with 
little resistance at first. Soon, however, he 
was attacked by such nnmbers that he was 
obliged to dismount his men, shelter his 
horses in a strip of woods and fight on foot. 
Finally, finding he would soon be surround- 
ed, he again mounted his men, charged the 
enemy and recrossing the river, took a natur- 
ally fortified position on the top of a bluff. 

Benteen, returning from his detour, dis- 
covered his position and drove away the In- 
dians and joined him. Soon the mule train 
was also within his lines, making seven com- 
panies under his command. 

Reno engaged the Indians soon after noon 
on the 25th and did some hard fighting until 
the evening of the 26th, when the enemy 
withdrew. After congratulations with their 
reinforcements the question uppermost in 
every mind was : ^ ^ Where is Custer 1 ' ' 

They had heard heavy firing on the after- 
noon of the 25th and saw the black cloud of 
smoke settle like a pall over the valley, but 
Reno had his wounded to care for, and to 



26 TSlETr YEARS ON' THE FROK'TIER, 

have gone to the relief of Custer would have 
left them to be butchered. Neither could he 
divide his command, for such a course would 
have been suicidal. 

Meanwhile the supply steamer, Far West, 
with General Terry on board, steamed up the 
Yellowstone on June 23rd and overtook Gib- 
bon's troops near the mouth of the Big Horn 
on the morning of the 24th. At 5 o'clock on 
the morning of the 25th, Gibbon's column 
was marching over a country so rugged as 
to tax the endurance of the men to the ut- 
most, and the infantry halted for the night, 
meantime General Terry pushed ahead with 
the cavalry and a light mountain battery. 
On the morning of the 26th, some Crow In- 
dians reported to General Terry that a great 
fight had been going on the day before, and 
later scouts reported that a dense, heavy 
smoke was resting over the southern horizon 
far ahead, and in a short time it became visi- 
ble to all. 

So broken was the country and progress 
became so difficult that it was not until the 
morning of the 27th that Terry's relief col- 
umn found the trail of Custer. 



THIETY YEAKS 0]Sr THE FKONTIER. 27 

They had passed cautiously through a 
dense grove of trees and the head of the col- 
umn entered upon a beautiful level meadow 
about a mile in width extending along the 
west side of the stream and skirted east and 
west by high bluffs. It was apparent at sight 
that this meadow had been the site of an im- 
mense 'Indian village and showed signs of 
hasty abandonment. Hundreds of lodge 
poles with finely dressed buffalo robes, dried 
meats, utensils and Indian trinkets were left 
behind. In a large tepee still standing were 
the stiffened forms of ten dead Indians. Ev- 
ery step of the march from here on showed 
signs of a desperate struggle. The dead 
bodies of Indian horses were seen; here and 
there were cavalry equipments, and soon the 
bodies of dead troopers, beside their frantic 
and still struggling, wounded horses gave 
evidence of a disastrous battle, and farther 
on was revealed a scene calculated to appall 
the stoutest heart. Here was a skirmish line 
marked by rows of slain with heaps of empty 
cartridge shells before them, and their offi- 
cers lay dead just behind them. Still farther 
on men lay in winrows, their faces still 
drawn with the awful desperation of a strug- 



28 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

gle unto death; pulseless hands still clasped 
blood-stained sabres. Near the highest point 
of the hill lay the body of General Custer. 
There was a cordon of his brave defenders 
dead about him; his long hair was clotted 
with blood, while a great wound in his breast 
told how the brave soul had gone somewhere 
out into the wide waste and hush of eternity. 
Near him lay the body of his brother, Cap- 
tain Custer, and some distance away another 
brother, Boston Custer, and his nephew, 
Armstrong Eeed, a youth of 19. All were 
scalped except General Custer and Mark 
Kellogg, a correspondent of the New York 
Herald. 

When the fight was at the hardest a Crow 
Indian with Custer wrapped himself in a 
dead Sioux Indian's blanket and made his 
escape ; as he left the field he saw the squaws 
and Indian children rifling the dead of their 
trinkets and going about with their stone 
battle axes beating out the brains of the 
wounded; they danced about over the dead 
and dying, mutilating their bodies and sing- 
ing the wild, wierd strains of their battle 
songs. 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 29 

When the welcome news of relief came to 
Eeno's besieged command, strong men wept 
like children. 

Among the first of his men to search 
among the fallen for a dead friend was one 
Charles Wilson, a blue-eyed, beardless troop- 
er, a mere boy whose heart seemed to fairly 
break as he contemplated what must have 
been the awful death of his comrades. The 
man he was seeking was Jim Bristow, a tall, 
dark private whose last words to the young 
trooper were : 

'^Charley, my hour has come. We shall 
ride into this fight and you will come back 
alone. I want you to promise to take a little 
trouble for me when I am gone. You will 
find her face here in this locket upon my 
breast. I had thought to some day make her 
my wife, and that thought has gladdened my 
lonely life. Write to her, Charley, and tell 
her where is my resting place and that my 
spirit will wait for hers in that borderland 
twixt heaven and earth.'' 

The boy answered, and his voice was low 
with pain. Just then the bugle sounded, and 
for an instant eye met eye and hand touched 
hand, and Jim Bristow rode away with Cus- 



30 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

ter's column. This was the man young Wil- 
son was searching for. The dead were so 
frightfully mutilated, their bodies bloated, 
blackened and swollen by the hot rays of the 
sun that they were buried as speedily as pos- 
sible, on June 28th. Major Eeno and the 
survivors of his regiment performed the last 
sad rites over their comrades and then a 
general retreat to the mouth of the Big Horn 
River was ordered. 



V. 



THE SHADOW SCOUT. 



The bugle notes had died away, the cloud 
of battle smoke lifted from the valley and 
peaceful starlight shone over the rugged 
hills when a shadow crept out of a deep ra- 
vine and skulked into the valley of death and 
began dealing out retribution. Chief Dull 
Knife had much to say about it when he sur- 
rendered. He spoke in whispers when he re- 
ferred to it, and he looked suddenly around, 
as if he feared it was softly stealing upon 
him to stab him in the back. Chief Gall's 
braves had something to say about it when 
they surrendered, and when white men asked 
them who or what the shadow was, they 
shook their heads and whispered : 

'^We kill 'em all, but yet there is one left. 
It is a white man; there is blood on his face 
and clothing; he carries a sabre and two re- 
volvers, and the night wind blows his long 
black hair over his shoulders. It is a spirit 



32 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

sent by the Great Manitou to watcli over the 
graves of the white soldiers. '^ 

White men saw the shadow, hunters, trap- 
pers and scouts who built their camp fires 
near that valley, through which the big 
mountain wolf skulked and prowled all night 
long, had felt the mysterious presence of the 
shadow or had seen it. They fled from their 
blankets at its soft step, and they had fired 
at it, and seen it glide off unharmed. 

It was not a shadow of sentiment, but a 
being who sought vengeance for the butchery 
of the little band of heroes, for the brave 
comrades who grouped themselves about the 
noble Custer and fought to the death. 

Wlien the soldiers moved out of the valley, 
leaving so many graves behind them, the 
wolves rushed out from canon, ravine and 
den, to dig up the fresh earth and mutilate 
the dead. The shadow was there — a solitary, 
mysterious and vigilant sentinel to guard 
those sacred mounds. It screamed and ges- 
tured at the fierce beasts, it fired upon them 
with rifle and revolver and struck them with 
bright, keen sabre. The wolves ran here and 
there, from grave to grave, gnashing their 
teeth in anger, but the shadow closely pur- 



o 

p 

13* 

a> 
1-^ • 

C 

cr 
O 

p 



o 

c 

(T) 



p 

Ofq 




THIETY YEAKS ON THE FKONTIEK. 33 

sued them. They formed in groups in the 
midnight darkness and waited for the shad- 
ow to tire out and fall asleep or go away, 
but it paced up and down over the graves, 
vigilant and unwearied, and daylight came to 
hurry the wild beasts to their lairs till an- 
other night. 

Hunters and scouts had seen the sentinel- 
beat among the graves in the light of noon- 
day, when men could not be mistaken. The 
path ran from grave to grave, winding about 
to take in every one, and then it ran to the 
river and disappeared in a ledge of rocks. 
Scouts said it was a path beaten by human 
feet. The Indians said that a shadow or 
spirit alone could remain in that lonely spot, 
having only the company of wild beasts and 
the graves of the lonely dead. 

Once when Eed Cloud and a trusty few 
were scouting to learn the whereabouts of 
their white foes, they encamped in the valley 
for the night. The shadow stole among them 
as they slept, and when the fierce scream 
aroused the band from their slumbers, five 
of the red men had been murdered, each 
throat slashed across with a keen blade. The 
shadow stood and jeered at the living, who 



34 THIKTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

huddled together like frightened children. 
When they fled for their lives it pursued 
them with drawn saber, and one of them had 
a scar on his shoulder to prove he had been 
struck with a blade. Next day when a full 
band of Indians rode into the valley to solve 
the mystery and secure revenge, they saw no 
living thing. The bodies of the dead war- 
riors were cut and hacked and gashed. Five 
of the poor cavalrymen whose brains had 
been beaten out had been revenged. 

Before the crown of a single grave had 
sunk down, Crazy Horse started to cross the 
valley at midnight with his lodges. The 
shadow confronted his band and mocked 
them, and as the red men hurried along in the 
darkness, vividly recalling the mad charge of 
the cavalry, the strange shadow skulked 
along with the column and fired shot after 
shot into the band. They fired at it and 
rushed out to capture it, but it disappeared, 
as shadows do. Two squaws, a child or two, 
an old man and two warriors fell by the bul- 
lets which the shadow fired. From that time 
the red men avoided the valley as white men 
avoid a pest. They would not cross it or 



THIBTY YEAES ON THE FKONTIER. 35 

skirt it, even at high noon when the sunshiije 
beat down upon the graves. 

Texas Jack, the famous scout in the em- 
ploy of the army, and a companion, in the 
late autumn of 1876 crossed the lonely battle- 
ground and halted long enough to see that 
the graves had not been disturbed. They 
saw the path of the sentinel leading from 
grave to grave. They saw the skeletons of 
the red men slain by the shadow. They saw 
the shadow itself. They were leaving the 
valley when their ears were greeted by a wild 
laugh, and from a bed of rank grass and dry 
weeds a quarter of a mile away they saw the 
shadow beckon them to come forward. The 
shadow was a man — a tall, gaunt, heavy 
bearded and long-haired human being dress- 
ed in rags that once had been an army uni- 
form. He held up in the air and shook at 
them a carbine and a sabre, and when they 
galloped away, he sent a leaden ball whis- 
tling over their heads. 

This was the last time this trooper was 
seen alive, no doubt he was bereft of reason, 
and believed himself called upon to avenge 
his comrades and so lurked in the valley, liy- 



36 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

ing like the wild beasts around him and miss- 
ing no chance to strike a blow. 

Some years later, when peace was restored 
and Crow Dog with his son and two warriors 
were hunting buffalo on the Little Big Horn, 
they were themselves pursued by a hostile 
party of Crow Indians. They took refuge 
among the shelving rocks along the river. 
Far into the deep recesses, where the waves 
and winds for centuries had hollowed out a 
chamber, they found a skeleton. By its side 
lay a carbine, two revolvers and a long cav- 
alry sabre; about the neck was a delicately 
wrought chain with a gold locket attached. 
This and some other trinkets they carried 
away. After a lapse of fourteen years from 
the time Custer and his soldiers fell, these 
same Sioux Indians were again on the war 
path in the Bad Lands of South Dakota. 
Custer's old regiment was there, too. Many 
of them had fought with Reno and Benteen 
on that fateful 25th of June, and by the 
chance of war it was a part of their command 
under Colonel Forsythe who fought the bat- 
tle of Wounded Knee. Among them was 
Charles Wilson, the beardless boy, who rode 
away with Reno, whilst his friend Jim Bris- 



THIKTY YEAKS ON THE FKONTIEE. 37 

tow followed Custer. No longer a boy, but 
a bronzed and bearded soldier who had stood 
the chance of fate in many an Indian fight. 

After the battle, when they were gathering 
up the dead Indians frozen stiff by a four 
days' blizzard which raged with wild fury 
over the plain, there was found about the 
neck of a young warrior a locket and chain. 
Wilson curiously examined the trophy and 
found upon opening it, the photograph of 
Jim Bristow on one side and upon the other 
the sweet face of the girl who had promised 
to be his wife. The young brave from whose 
neck the locket was taken was found to be 
the son of Crow Dog, who had married into 
Big Foot's band, and this blood-stained bau- 
ble, which had at last found its way into the 
hands of Bristow 's friend as he had intended 
when they parted, and all the circumstances 
connected with it, revealed at last the iden- 
tity of the shadow-scout who kept the mid- 
night vigils over the graves of Custer's he- 
roic dead; who when the chill blasts of the 
northern winter had come, had crept into his 
lair among the rocks and far from the cot- 
tage where the voice of love had pleaded so 
long for his return, with the smoke of battle 



38 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

still before Ms eyes, and with the shouts and 
shots of that dreadful day still ringing in his 
ears, had died alone. 

Wilson stood by my side a week later as a 
heavy army wagon rolled into Pine Eidge 
agency bearing the body of Sitting Bull, the 
great war chief, who had directed and led the 
fight on Custer's men. When the wagon 
halted, Wilson drew the canvas cover from 
the dead chief's form and gazed long at the 
bronzed, cruel face, which even in death, was 
magnificent in the strong drawn lines of un- 
relenting hatred. There was a cold glint of 
light in Wilson's eye as he took one last sat- 
isfied look at this dead monster of the plains 
and turned away to keep his word given 
fourteen years before to his comrade — Jim 
Bristow — the last survivor of that awful 
massacre on the Little Big Horn. 



VI. 



INDIAN FIGHT IN COLOKADO. 

Old ^^ Daddy ''Stephenson sat in the shade of 
the ranch house, squinting his one eye toward 
the north, the other eye having been shot out 
a few years before. His squaw was boiling 
the leg of an antelope in a pot that swung un- 
der a tripod of sticks nearby, when '^Doc'' 
Kinnie and Charley Hayes rode up. 

^* Here's yer Injun," shouted '^Doc," as he 
untied his lariat from a blanket and let the 
bloody head of an Indian roll on the ground 
near Stephenson's feet. 

The old squaw came over, took a look, and, 
uttering a long, doleful sound like the cry of 
a wounded wolf, ran inside and grabbing her 
blanket, started for the hills, chanting a dis- 
mal wail peculiar to her people when in dis- 
tress. 

**You fellows have played billy hell; 
you've killed my brother-in-law," calmly re- 
marked Stephenson as he refilled his pipe 



40 THIKTY YEAKS ON THE FRONTIEE. 

and again cast his one eye toward the north. 

^^And the best thing you can do is to hit the 
trail while you are wearing your scalps," he 
continued after a pause of several minutes. 

At that moment the old man's half Indian 
boy and myself came up from the corral. 

This incident furnished the cause for an 
ugly Indian fight which occurred on Rock 
creek, northeastern Colorado, on June 12, 
1877. 

**Doc'' Kinnie, Charley Hayes and myself 
had come from Deadwood to Cheyenne as an 
escort for a stage coach carrying the Wells- 
Fargo express, when Stephenson offered us 
better pay to work on his cattle ranch. 

Four days before the incident of the bloody 
head, Stephenson had missed seven head of 
cattle and had struck the trail of one Indian 
who had driven them off. He rode to the 
ranch house in high rage and offered Kinnie 
and Hayes one hundred dollars if they would 
recover the cattle and kill the Indian. In five 
minutes they were in their saddles riding to 
the point where Stephenson indicated the 
trail. I did not join them, as Stephenson in- 
sisted that two were enough. Kinnie and 
Hayes had no difficulty in following the trail 




Charles Hayes, "Doc" Kinnie, Robert McReynolds. 

After the Fight (page 40). 



THIETY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 41 

of the stolen cattle and were close on them 
the next evening. Not caring for a night at- 
tack they went into camp, eating their bacon 
raw rather than make a fire. They were in 
their saddles at the first grey streak of dawn 
and within an honr came npon two Indians 
eating their morning meal in a canon, while 
the missing cattle were grazing five hun- 
dred yards beyond. 

It was a complete surprise to the Indians, 
and in the melee that followed one of them 
was killed and the other made his escape. It 
then became a question of how best to prove 
to Stephenson that they had killed the Indian 
without the burden of taking him back. 

Kinnie, who had been a medical student in 
Ohio before a certain escapade had caused 
him to emigrate to the west, suggested the 
amputation of the dead Indian's head as the 
handiest way, and also suggested that they 
keep quiet as to the Indian who got away, lest 
the old man should only want to pay one-half 
of the promised reward. 

Hayes stood guard while Kinnie cut and 
twisted the Indian's neck until the head sepa- 
rated from the body. He then rolled it in the 
Indian's blanket and carried it on the pom- 



42 THIKTY YEAKS ON THE FRONTIEE. 

mel of Ms saddle until the afternoon, when 
he rolled the ghastly trophy out on the 
ground in front of Stephenson and his squaw 
wife. 

*^ Seems to me if I had your kind of rela- 
tions I would pay a better price and get them 
all killed off/' said Hayes, as he returned 
from the corral. 

This remark nettled Stephenson, who 
smoked his pipe awhile in silence. He then 
grew angry, ordered the three of us to hit the 
trail for Fort Morgan at once, saying that 
two thousand Cheyenne Indians would be 
down upon us as soon as his squaw could 
communicate with them. This we refused to 
do, as neither Kinnie nor Hayes, nor their 
horses were in condition for flight, besides 
the old man had not settled and we rightly 
guessed that he would like to get out of pay- 
ing the one hundred dollars, as well as pre- 
serve his good standing with the Indians. 

Later in the evening he was caught hiding 
a quantity of Winchester cartridges. That 
settled him. We knew then he wanted to see 
us slain, while he would endeavor to lay 
blame upon us. In five minutes he was 
bound hand and foot and laid upon a corner 



THIKTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIEE. 43 

in the ranch house upon some blankets. The 
Indian boy was also bound and thrown into 
another corner for safe keeping. The log 
ranch house was then loop-holed and our 
horses were brought inside, also a quantity of 
hay, wood and water. 

We were prepared for a siege. Kinnie and 
Hayes lay down to sleep, while I kept the first 
watch of the night. All light was extinguished 
and I constantly went from loop-hole to loop- 
hole, peering into the darkness for the ap- 
proaching foe, while the old man lay upon his 
blankets, swearing like the old sinner he was. 
I lay down for some sleep in the after part of 
the night, leaving the others to watch. 

It was daylight when I was awakened by 
rifle shots. They came from a hill upon 
whose crest rode forty Cheyenne warriors, 
bedecked in feathers and war paint and 
stripped for battle. 

We made no reply to their shots, but led 
them to believe by our silence that the ranch 
house was deserted. 

After pow-wowing for an hour, six of them 
began advancing cautiously. We waited they 
were within a hundred feet of the house, 
when our rifles emptied three of the saddles, 



44 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

and two more were riderless before the 
sixth retreating Indian reached the main 
party, which by that time was in commotion 
and had begun a circling ride around the 
ranch house to prevent our escape. 

For the remainder of the day they kept 
well out of reach of our rifles, but when night 
had gathered they stole away their dead and 
wounded under cover of darkness. The next 
morning there was no sign of them. We 
were not to be caught, however, by such a 
ruse, having played the same game ourselves 
the morning before. We felt sure they would 
be reinforced within two days with an over- 
whelming force that could easily storm the 
house and tear it down over our heads. 

Our only hope was to get away, and we 
held a council of war in whispers. The old 
man and boy had been released at intervals 
to relieve the pain of the cords, but not a 
word was said to them of our plans. When 
darkness again came we saddled our horses, 
stored a quantity of provisions in our blan- 
kets, strapped them behind our saddles and 
filled our canteens with water. 

The Indian boy was then liberated and 
given these instructions: 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 45 

** Creep along the banks of the creek until 
you come to the lone cottonwood tree, one 
and one-half miles distant, then fire six shots 
from a revolver. This will draw the Indians 
to you, when you can explain that we have 
compelled you to do this. If you fail to fire 
the shots we will kill the old man and charge 
through the Indian lines anyway.*' 

This command was delivered to the boy in 
a manner calculated to impress him with 
the earnestness of the threat, although it was 
not our intention to harm Stephenson, and 
yet the muzzle of a Winchester close to his 
head caused him to earnestly implore the boy 
to faithfully do as he was told. 

From then the minutes dragged like hours. 
We watched anxiously from our loop-holes 
for the flash from the young Indian's re- 
volver. Twenty minutes passed, then thirty, 
and no shot was fired. Was he playing us 
false, or had he been captured by the Chey- 
ennes, who in turn might set a trap for us. 
Thirty-six minutes passed, then a spark 
flashed in the distance and we counted six 
shots. This was the critical moment and ev- 
ery ear was listening for the sounds of 
horses' hoofs. A few moments later we 



46 THIKTY YEAKS ON THE FEONTIER. 

heard them, as they came out of the ravines. 
We saw them, too, as they skirted along the 
dim sky line. We waited a few minutes to 
give them time to reach the cottonwood tree 
and then led our horses out and rode rapidly 
away to the northwest, knowing that the clat- 
ter of our horses' hoofs would mingle with 
those of the Indian ponies and might readily 
be taken for those of their own horsemen. 

Our rifles were in our saddle holsters and 
our heavy revolvers were in our hands, as we 
rode in silence. Kinnie was in the lead, 
while Hayes and I rode behind side by side. 
Not a word was spoken for more than five 
hours, until day was breaking, and by l:he 
red glow of the eastern sky we saw away 
down the plains the camp fires and white 
tents of a troop of cavalry from Fort Mor- 
gan. Kinnie burst out into a long, hearty 
peal of laughter. 

**What the deuce has struck you nowT' 
asked Hayes. 

**I forgot to give daddy any change back,'' 
he replied, as he held up a well-filled pocket- 
book. 



vn. 



A COWBOY DUEL. 



Tom Rawlins rolled out of his blankets 
from under tlie chuck wagon with the remark, 
**I suppose a man shouldn't be late at his 
own funeral, ' ' and walking over to the camp- 
fire, lit his pipe by the glowing embers. 

Day was breaking, and by a solemn cora- 
pact entered into with **Kid'' Anderson the 
night before, he would be dead at sunrise. 

A month before they had exchanged shots 
in a dance house in Ogallala, after quarreling 
about a woman. The two cowboys met in 
North Platte the day before, for the first 
time since the affair, and each swore the 
other should die. 

Many of us who were friends of the two 
men divided into factions and crowded about 
the principals. The declaration of war hav- 
ing been made on both sides, neither could 
withdraw without losing caste, as such was 
the custom in the 70 's among the wild fellows 



48 THIKTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

of the plains, who put a cheap estimate on hu- 
man life. Eawlins had seen four years' ser- 
vice in the Confederate army, and at the close 
of the war had followed General Joe Shelby 
into Mexico and fought under the banner of 
Maxmilian. When Bazaine withdrew the 
French troops he secured his discharge and 
returned to Texas wearing the honorable 
scars of battle. ^ ' Kid ' ' Anderson was inured 
to the life on the plains from his youth and 
had been in many an ugly Indian fight. 

Someone suggested a duel, and no Indian 
ever conceived a more fiendish plan. Two 
Colt revolvers with handles exactly alike, one 
loaded, the other unloaded, were placed under 
a blanket with handles protruding. A silver 
dollar was tossed into the air, heads to win, 
tails to lose. The winner was to have the 
choice of the revolvers. If he drew the load- 
ed one, he had the right to shoot the loser, 
who was to stand ten paces away with the 
unloaded weapon in his hand. Eawlins won 
the choice of revolvers and drew the empty 
one. 

Anderson then spent a month's wages buy- 
ing drinks for the boys, and kindly gave Eaw- 
lins until sunrise the next morning to live. 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 49 

Rawlins accepted his fate with stoicism and 
returned to camp, rolled in his blankets and 
slept soundly. Inured to danger for years, 
he knew sooner or later the end would come, 
and so gave himself but little concern 
about it. 

It was the spring round up and there were 
fifteen outfits in camp within two miles of 
North Platte, and the round up would begin 
as soon as two more outfits arrived. 

The news of the plan and chance of fate by 
which Rawlins was to lose his life had spread 
from one camp-fire to another during the 
night, and created an intense excitement. 

Rawlins was standing by the fire, when I. 
P. Olive, one of the largest owners on the 
range, rode up. 

*'Look here, Rawlins, suppose you had 
won, would you shoot Anderson down like a 
dog this morning!" 

*' Certainly I would, '^ he replied, '^and he 
would not be the first dog I have killed, 
either. ' ^ 

^ ^ This thing cannot go on, ' ' said Olive, de- 
cisively. ^^If you men have got to kill each 
other you must do it in a civilized fashion. 
Your plan is too cold-blooded j it ha§ given 



50 THIETY YEAKS ON THE FRONTIER. 

the shivers to the entire camp.'' He then 
rode over to the ** Double Bar'' camp, where 
Anderson lay sleeping. 

^*Get up from there, you wild ass of the 
plains," he shouted. ** Rawlins is waiting to 
be killed. Are you going to do it T ' 

Anderson was on his feet in an instant, fac- 
ing Olive in the dim light of the camp-fire. 

^'It is none of your business what I intend 
to do ! " and his yellow eyes gleamed danger- 
ously as his hand stole to the handle of his 
sixshooter. Olive was a dangerous man him- 
self and had a record of killing four men in 
Texas. He saw danger in the manner he had 
approached Anderson, and using a more con- 
ciliatory tone, said: 

^'Give Rawlins a show for his life and we 
will all think the more of you for it." 

Finding the sentiment of others who joined 
in with Olive strong against him, Anderson 
yielded to a change. This time the principals 
were to meet upon the plain a mile from 
camp, mounted and armed with revolvers. 
They were to fight within a circle of one hun- 
dred yards, outside of which they might re- 
treat, reload and return to the combat. 

It was a beautiful morning, all balm and 



THIETY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 51 

bloom and verdure. The face of the sky was 
placid and benignant. The sun rose like a 
great golden disc on the purple and pearl of 
the distant sky line and clouds, airy and gos- 
samer, floated away to the west. 

The men stole away from camp in twos 
and threes, and were gathering on a knoll 
that overlooked the battle ground, while Raw- 
lins and Anderson were selecting their horses 
from the remudas. Rawlins chose a Texas 
mustang, fleet of foot and supple as an Arab. 
Anderson chose a stocky built animal and ap- 
peared altogether indifferent as to any of his 
qualities. The two men were stationed at 
the edge of the circle formed of lariats with 
their backs toward each other. 

Olive gave the word, ^*Ready!'' The men 
grasped their bridle reins tightly and settled 
themselves in their stirrups. 

' ^ Wheel I ' * The trained horses turned as if 
upon pivots. 

^^Fire!*' rang out Olive's clear voice of 
command. 

Anderson rode forward a few paces and 
stopped. Rawlins dug his spurs into his ani- 
maPs side, and came on with a rush, firing 



52 THIETY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

his revolver as he came. Four shots sped 
harmlessly over the plain. 

The men were within a few feet of each 
other when Anderson fired his first shot. 
Rawlins reeled in his saddle a second, 
grasped the pommel, and bringing down his 
revolver sent a bnllet through the brain of 
Anderson. 

Both men fell from their horses, and there 
were two dead faces in the grass. 

The horses dashed wildly away, with blood 
upon their trappings and sleek hides. 

Two graves were dug, and the funeral was 
over before the sun had dried the dew upon 
the grass. 

There was a girl in Nebraska without a 
lover, and a widowed mother in Texas with- 
out a son. 



VIII. 

PLEASANT HALFACRE's REVENGE. 

I was with a party of cowboys twenty-five 
miles west of Ogallala, Nebraska, in 1878, 
when a huge iron box was found in the sands 
of the Platte River by one of our party, which 
recalled a tradition of tragedy and revenge, 
unequaled in the annals of the west. 

In one of those great bends of the Ohio 
River, opposite Three Mile Island and below 
the town of Newburgh, in Southern Indiana, 
there lived some forty years ago, a man who 
furnished cause for which his neighbors with 
one accord, joined in deporting him. 

Pleasant Halfacre occupied a cabin in a 
small clearing, which opened on the south, 
facing the bayou which separated the island 
from the mainland on the Indiana side. On 
all other sides for a mile or more was a dense 
forest, where great hickory, pecan and beech 
trees furnished the winter provender for the 



54 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIEK. 

grey squirrels, raccoons and opossums. In 
some places the woodland was low and 
swampy; there were great ponds where the 
water lilies grew and in winter the wild duck 
and brant paused long in their southern 
flight to feed. The bayou abounded in cat- 
fish and silvery perch. 

In this little oasis in a desert of toilers, 
Halfacre had lived for nearly a quarter of a 
century. His wife, a big buxom woman, was 
the mother of eight tow-headed children who, 
when anyone chanced to come, acted like 
scared squirrels. They would scamper away 
into the woods and coyly peep at the stranger 
from behind big trees, while the dogs kept up 
an incessant barking. 

In summer, the woman and children would 
cultivate the small clearing with hoes, while 
Plez would catch catfish and sometimes work 
in the harvest field a few days for some 
neighbor. This he did only when dire neces- 
sity compelled. The very sight of an agricul- 
tural implement, he declared, would make 
him sweat. The man loved nature and in his 
simplicity, would go into raptures over the 
coloring of the gorgeous sunset, or wade 
about the ponds for hours for water lilies, or 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 55 

the great blue, bell-shaped flowers which 
grew upon the wild flag and calimus stalks. 

He would bedeck his ragged garments with 
these flowers and, with a string of catfish, 
would emerge, a gorgeous spectacle, from the 
forest on his way to the Evansville market. 

In winter his children would gather pecans 
and hickory nuts, while he would take the 
dogs and hunt raccoons and opossums, the 
meat of which furnished the family food, 
while the pelts brought a small price at the 
market. 

In all the forty years of his life, Halfacre 
had not been twenty miles away from his 
home. He could neither read nor write and 
the world to him ended at the blue rim of the 
northern horizon beyond the cypress hills. 
The man was totally devoid of any sense of 
responsibility, either to his Creator, his 
neighbors or himself. Once when the good 
preacher, who held services at the ^^Epworth 
meeting house * ' twice a month, reproved him 
for some misdemeanor by threatening him 
with the hereafter, he replied. **The devil 
can't inflict any more punishment on me than 
I can stand, if he does, he will kill me. ' ' With 
this logic to soothe his conscience, and his 



66 THIETY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

love of idleness thoroughly gratified, Half- 
acre was very well contented. 

For a long time the neighbors, for many 
miles around, had been missing articles of 
small value, the loss of which caused much 
delay in their work as well as vexation and 
annoyance. 

A farmer would be all ready to go to mar- 
ket and when he came to hitch up, he would 
find the coupling bolt to his wagon gone, or 
perhaps the singletree would be missing; or 
if ploughing in the field he would take the 
horses out to where he had left the plow the 
night before and find that the clevis or some 
bolts had been stolen. The good matrons 
would have their dinner horns or bells taken 
away at night. Nothing of any considerable 
value was stolen and no organized search was 
made until one day, Farmer Beasley was 
floating down the bayou in a dinkey boat 
when he came upon one of Plez Half acre's 
children sitting on the bank eating mush and 
milk out of the blue flowered shaving mug 
which old Tippecanoe Harrison had present- 
ed to his grandfather, while another one of 
the Halfacre children sat upon a log, making 
a paw-paw whistle with his ancestor's razor. 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 57 

This was too mucli for Farmer Beasley. 
He turned the dinkey boat around, paddled 
back to Newburgh and swore out a search 
warrant for the Halfacre cabin. 

In the loft they found a collection of ar- 
ticles which was a wonder to behold. There 
were grindstones, iron wedges for splitting 
rails, harrow teeth and a miscellaneous lot of 
plunder, enough to start a second hand store. 

The word was passed and the next day the 
farmers began to assemble. They came by 
the score ; some in wagons bringing the entire 
family and their dinners, and the day was 
spent identifying stolen articles. 

Meantime,, while all this was going on 
Pleasant Halfacre sat to one side, looking the 
very picture of dejection. A council was held 
and it was decided that if they sent Plez to 
jail, the county would have to support his 
family, and as taxes were already high, it was 
decided to deport him, his family and chat- 
tels. 

Nearby, a house boat was found, which the 
owner offered to sell for twenty dollars. It 
was purchased and Halfacre, his family and 
effects were placed aboard and warned never 



58 THIKTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

to return, whereupon the boat was shoved out 
into the stream. 

It was a sad blow and one the least expect- 
ed. ^^To leave the cabin and go away where 
he should never again see the water lilies, out 
into the world where he just didn't know no- 
body. ' ' This was the burden of his lamenta- 
tions as he sat upon the bow of the boat and 
wept. 

Some of the women cried softly when they 
saw such evidence of his grief and love of 
home, humble and poverty stricken as it was, 
and they rode home in silence, wishing to for- 
get the scene of the grief stricken man, who 
had said the birds would never sing so sweet- 
ly to him again. 

When the word went around a day or two 
later, that Plez and his family were again 
living in the cabin, there was a general sigh 
of relief, and when the preacher spoke of for- 
giving ^* Those who trespass against us," 
there were some heartfelt Amens that went 
up from the holy corner of the ^^Epworth 
Church. ' ' 

Winter had come and the Halfacres were 
discussed by the good dames who gathered at 
each others homes at quilting parties, and 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 59 

many were the articles of outgrown clothing 
that were sent to the destitute cabin. 

There was a January thaw and the ice in 
the river was breaking up, when one morning 
in the grey dawn a barge came drifting down 
the stream amid the cakes of ice that were 
piling high upon the head of the island. A 
man was standing upon the deck, frantically 
calling for help, for it was certain the barge 
would be crushed in the great pack of ice 
when it struck the head of the island. 

A crowd had followed along the shore, but 
none seemed to know what to do or to have 
the courage to venture to the man^s rescue. 

Suddenly Plez Halfacre was seen to launch 
a skiff from among a clump of willows and 
standing on the bow, fought his way through 
the ice floes with an oar, rescued the man 
from his perilous position and landed safely 
below the head of the island. 

The barge was lost and Plez became the 
hero of the hour. 

The rescued man proved to be a wealthy 
coal mine owner from the neighborhood of 
Cannelton, and in his gratitude some days 
later he presented Halfacre with a cheque 
for $5,000. 



60 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

Again a pressure of the neighborhood was 
brought to bear, and Halfacre emigrated to 
the west. He started alone with his family 
from Omaha in a prairie schooner, intending 
to settle in the neighborhood of Denver. 
When twenty-five miles west of Ogallala he 
left his family in camp one afternoon and 
wandered some miles away over the plain in 
search of antelope. 

When he returned some hours later he 
found his wife and children slain by the In- 
dians and their mutilated bodies lying about 
the smoldering ruins of his wagon. The 
horses had been driven away. 

Wild with grief and rage, he did the best 
he could in burying his dead, and then made 
his way back to Omaha. He met with much 
sjrmpathy from the pioneers along the route, 
but for this he seemed to care but little. He 
went about in a gloomy, abstracted way that 
caused people to say he was losing his mind. 

One day he appeared at a blacksmith shop 
in Omaha, and ordered a big wagon box made 
of plow steel, which he paid for in advance. 
When it was completed he loaded it upon a 
wagon and covered it with a white cover, un- 
til it looked like an ordinary prairie schooner. 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 61 

Into this he loaded a barrel for water and 
provisions enough to last for six months. He 
also stored in the iron box, a large quantity 
of ammunition, with two or three rifles and 
revolvers. The sides, bottom and top of the 
box were loopholed, protected with iron 
slides. 

When all was ready he purchased horses 
and drove to the place near the Platte river, 
where his family had been slain. Here he 
picketed his horses and deliberately built a 
camp-fire. He did not have long to wait for 
results. The Indians saw the smoke, and see- 
ing only one man, they swept down upon his 
camp. He waited until they were reasonably 
near and went inside his iron box. When they 
came to within a few yards, he opened fire 
from the loop-holes, killing a number of them 
before they retreated. The Indians could not 
make out the situation, and that night they 
crept through the grass and tried to kindle a 
fire beneath his wagon. Halfacre was alert, 
and shot them from the bottom loop holes. 
After two or three assaults, in which they lost 
many of their number, the Indians went away 
and ever afterwards avoided the place, as 
they believed it protected by evil spirits. 



62 THIETY YEAES ON THE FEONTIER. 

Halfacre lived in his wagon for more than 
a year, making incursions into the Indian 
camps at night, where his rifle dealt death. 

To the Indians, he was an avenging spirit 
and they spoke of him in whispers. His re- 
mains were found some miles away, long 
afterwards by soldiers, who believed he had 
frozen to death in a blizzard. The rusted relic 
on the banks of the Platte River, slowly dis- 
appearing beneath the quicksands, was the 
only memento left of the tragedies there en- 
acted. 



IX. 



CAPTURING WILD HORSES. 

Lying upon the plain with his shoulder dis- 
located and his foot tangled np in a lariat, 0. 
E. Kimsey held the head of his fallen horse 
close to the ground, in No Man's Land, for 
four hours, to prevent him from rising and 
dragging him to certain death. 

We had gone to No Man's Land, now Bea- 
ver county, Oklahoma, in 1887, to capture 
wild mustangs, to be sold to the ranchmen of 
Kansas and Colorado. We had become sepa- 
rated in our search for them. Kimsey was 
far out on the plain when his horse stumbled 
into a coyote hole and as he fell beneath the 
horse his shoulder was dislocated. In a mo- 
ment he realized that his foot was tangled in 
his lariat, which hung from the pommel of 
his saddle, with one end tightly fastened 
there. The horse attempted to rise, but to 
allow him to do so would mean being dragged 
to death. 



64 THIKTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIEB. 

Kimsey threw his uninjured arm over the 
horse 's head and held him down. To call for 
help was useless in that barren and uninhab- 
ited plain, and he could do nothing else but 
hold the horse's head close to the ground. 
Night was coming on and he saw the hungry- 
coyotes gathering. His strength was failing 
as the hours dragged by. He had almost lost 
all hope when he thought he heard the tramp 
of a horse's hoofs, and he shouted loud and 
long. He was right. I was in search of him 
and came to his rescue. 

Our trip lasted five months, and in captur- 
ing the wild mustangs we followed a differ- 
ent plan from the Texas hunters. The latter 
pursued the horses night and day, using re- 
lays of mounts, until the horses were exhaust- 
ed, when they were driven into a corral. 

We had started early in the spring, in time 
to reach the wild horse country just as the 
first grass was covering the plains with 
green. 

The mustangs were then gaunt and thin 
from the hardships of winter and the new 
grass was not nutritious enough to strength- 
en them quickly. 

A boy kept camp for us while Kimsey and I 



THIKTY YEAKS ON THE FEONTIER. 65 

followed the horses. A spring wagon, under 

which we could sleep at night, was filled with 

provisions and grain. A dozen of the best 

saddle horses that could be found, that were 

selected for fleetness and endurance, were a 

part of the outfit. There was no hurrah and 

wild pursuit when the horses first came in 

sight. We rode toward them leisurely and 

took precautions to alarm them as little as 

possible. At first it was difficult to approach 

closer than three or four miles. Each band 

was led by a stallion that circled round and 
round. Sometimes there were three or four 

stallions with a band of twenty or thirty 

mares and their foals. Generally, however, 

each band consisted of five to a dozen mares 

and a stallion. The moment we appeared the 

horses would begin to move. If they were 

followed close they would break into a gallop, 

keeping on the ridges from which they could 

view the surrounding country. 

I know of nothing more fascinating than a 

band of moving wild horses. Their manes 

and tails are quite long and add grace to their 

movements as they sweep along in the wind. 

At a distance a tenderfoot imagines a wild 

horse to be a majestic animal, large in size, 



66 THIETY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

beautiful in color, clean of limb and fleet of 
foot. At close range they are a disappoint- 
ment, especially in the spring when their 
coats are rough. They have great endur- 
ance, some of them being able to carry a man 
70 miles between suns, and their recuperative 
power is wonderful. 

We pursued the largest band we could find, 
but, use the best precaution we could, the 
horses would take fright at first and run for 
ten or twelve miles before stopping. We 
tried to keep in sight of them if possible, and 
always made it a point to be close to them 
at sundown, as they sought water, and if not 
disturbed would remain near the spot all 
night. If startled they would move, and be- 
fore morning would be many miles away. 
They were on the move at the first streak of 
dawn. After we followed them two or three 
days the mustangs grew less wary, and we 
began teaching them to drive. 

A characteristic of the wild horse is that if 
an attempt is made to ride to the right of 
them, for the purpose of turning them to the 
left, they will invariably bolt to the right, 
and run directly across the path of their pur- 
suers. 



THIETY YEAKS ON" THE FRONTIEK. 67 

It requires nmcli time and patience to teach 
them to run in the opposite direction. We 
won our first point when we taught the horses 
to be driven. We then began driving them in 
a circle, which at first had a large circumfer- 
ence. As the horses grew weaker from want 
of rest and food, the circle grew smaller until 
its diameter did not exceed a quarter of a 
mile. Meantime, we were using relays of fresh 
horses. Then they were taught another les- 
son. A long lariat was stretched on the 
ground, and in the path of the horses. Wild 
mustangs are very sagacious and quick to 
suspect a trap. The rope always frightened 
them greatly at first, but in time they grew 
accustomed to it, and could be driven across 
it. We were now ready for business. The 
lariat was strongly anchored in the ground 
by tying it to a buried log. The best horses 
were now brought out and saddled. Riding 
as swiftly as possible, we started the wild 
horses moving in a circle and kept after them 
until our own horses were exhausted. The 
boy then took our place and maintained the 
swift pace, while we saddled fresh horses. 
Before a great while a colt would give out 
and drift, toward the center of the circle 



68 THERTY TEAES ON THE FEONTIEK. 

where it would be joined by its mother. 

A band of wild horses will not desert one 
another and there was no longer any fear 
that the running horses would bolt from the 
circle in which they were moving. In the free 
end of the lariat a big running noose had been 
tied. As the circle grew smaller the horses 
would begin running over the noose. The boy 
kept close watch and gave a strong pull on 
the lariat when he saw that a horse had 
stepped into the noose. The horse would fall, 
snared by the foot. A heavy log chain about 
three feet long was fastened to one of its fore- 
legs with a leather and the horse turned loose. 
The animal would spring to its feet and start 
away at a breakneck speed, only to turn a 
somersault, caught by the swinging chain en- 
circling its forelegs. 

When half a dozen horses had been caught 
in this manner the others would begin shying 
away from the noose, which was then aban- 
doned for the time being. Then we would coil 
our lariats and ride straight into the midst of 
the band and rope them until the band was 
scattered. 

The captured horses were then rounded up, 
and the lesson of teaching the others to pass 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 69 

over the rope was resumed. After a time, 
when their fear had abated, they would 
again pass over the rope without hesitancy. 
In this manner we caught one hundred and 
nine the first season. The work grew more 
difficult as the summer advanced; the grass 
was better, giving greater strength to the 
wild mustangs, while our own had become 
worn and thin with hard service. The cap- 
tured horses soon became accustomed to be- 
ing driven and herded and it was not difficult 
to move them across the plains to Kansas and 
Colorado, where they were sold. Kimsey 
usually selected the best ones and broke them 
to the saddle, an exciting and dangerous busi- 
ness. 

Wild horses gave much trouble to ranch- 
men in those days. Tame horses are quick 
to follow wild ones away, but a wild horse 
never voluntarily forsakes the freedom of the 
plains for the corn fodder of the corral. The 
wild stallions are constantly seeking to in- 
crease their harem of mares. On the plains 
they do it through their ability as fighters 
and their superior generalship over weaker 
stallions. They resort to extreme violence in 
adding tame mares to their bands. I have 



70 THIETY YEAES ON THE ERONTIEE. 

seen a wild stallion gallop up to a herd of do- 
mestic horses, select a mare, and then begin 
maneuvering to driver her away. Sometimes 
the mare is lying down and refuses to get up. 
The stallion throws back his ears and breaks 
for her at full speed. If she does not move 
he seizes her with his teeth and bites her so 
violently that she is glad to spring to her feet. 
Once moving, she is lost, as the stallion keeps 
close behind, biting and pawing at her until 
she is driven into his band, when all of them 
gallop away. In time they drive away many 
horses, and in the old days ranchmen often 
united and killed wild stallions as they killed 
wolves. The stallions are constantly fighting 
among themselves, but as a rule without great 
injury to each other. Domestic stallions fight 
to the death, but the wild ones seem to know 
when they are worsted and the weaker ones 
run away. There were usually about as many 
wild stallions as mares, and as each success- 
ful stallion had from six to a dozen mares, 
there were necessarily a number of stallions 
who were freebooters on the plains. These 
were mostly old stallions, grown weak with 
age, and young ones not old enough to win 



THIRTY YEAES ON THE FRONTIER. 71 

their fights. I have seen as many as seventy- 
five such stallions in a band. 

It was November when Kimsey and I sat in 
the Albany Hotel in Denver and divided al- 
most $3,000 as the profits of our season's 
work. 

* ^ Where to now, Kimsey T ' I asked. * * I go 
to San Antonio for the winter; and youf 

**To the C. C. Ranch, on the Cimarron,*' I 
replied. 



X. 



AN EXPEDITION THAT FAILED. 

Five men sat about a table in an upper 
room of the Coates House in Kansas City. 
The names of several of them I omit, as they 
will sleep easier. Upon the table was a plate 
of shining gold nuggets of a value of $1,600. 
Charley Cole, the owner, was a miner from 
the northwest. 

He had met the party the day before, and 
offered to show them where the nuggets 
came from for $2,000, saying his reason for 
so doing was that he wanted to clean up and 
go to the Transvaal, then the Mecca of the 
gold-seeker. 

This incident was in June, 188 — . Around 
that table a party was organized, but with 
the understanding that no money should be 
paid until the gold was found to our satisfac- 
tion, and with the further understanding that 
if Cole was deceiving us with the idea of lead- 



THIRTY YEAES ON THE FRONTIER. 73 

ing US into a bandit trap to secure our money, 
he should be the first man shot. 

To this he agreed and the next day the 
party was increased to six by a young doctor. 
Ten days later we were in Eawlins, Wyom- 
ing, where horses and a general outfit were 
purchased and the journey to the Wind River 
country in the Shoshone Indian reservation 
was begun. 

July had come and the plains and valleys 
were beautiful in billowy green. Cole, always 
in the lead, headed west of Lander. There 
was nothing I could see about the man to indi- 
cate that he was other than he represented, 
although several of the party whispered sus- 
picions as, day by day, we penetrated the wild 
and almost uninhabited country. 

We entered the reservation at a point 
about thirty miles west of Lander, which 
town we had purposely avoided, not wishing 
to incite others to a gold hunt. 

We broke camp and were riding down a 
beautiful valley one morning, when we came 
upon some antelope. I wounded one, and as 
it was getting away I spurred my horse after 
the antelope on the run. My horse stumbled 
into a badger hole, and the next thing I re- 



74 THIETY YEAES OK THE ITIOKTIEE. 

member distinctly was the awful pain as the 
doctor of our party was setting my broken 
ankle. 

My horse was also lame, but later in the 
day I made out to ride him five miles to the 
camp of some Shoshone Indians. 

The pain in my limb was so great I could 
go no further, and as the Indians were friend- 
ly and hospitable, I begged to be left in their 
camp. A bed was made for me upon the 
ground in one of the tepees, and after giving 
me surgical attention, and leaving me such 
comforts as we carried, the party proceeded, 
at my request, for I knew it would be weeks 
before I could travel, and even then I would 
be a hindrance. 

I felt secure from the kindly attention I had 
received from the Indians, who seemed de- 
sirous in many ways of alleviating my suf- 
ferings. Ejiowing that the Indian despises 
any manifestation of pain, I managed never 
to utter a groan, or show distress in my face, 
no matter how excruciating was Nature's 
process of healing. 

After three or four days an Indian cut 
away the doctor's splints and bound my limb 
in a huge pack of wet clay. From that mo- 



THIRTY YEAES ON THE FKONTIER. 75 

ment the pain grew less, and as I felt more 
like talking, the Indians would gather in the 
tepee and sit about like children. I made 
pictures to amuse them, taught them the 
game of mumbledy-peg, and in various ways 
won their simple affections. 

The days had been dragging wearily, when 
the monotony was broken by an Indian wed- 
ding. Bright Eyes, a damsel of no exceeding 
beauty, was of that age when the consent of 
her father could be secured for her marriage 
for a consideration of ponies. 

Several young bucks had been staking their 
ropes for the catch, each hoping he would be 
the fortunate one in securing her for a part- 
ner. Some of them had offered as high as 
nine ponies. But Wah-ne-a-tah, which means 
in English, *^it is hurting him,'' came for- 
ward with a dozen ponies and secured the 
prize. A beef from the Agency had been se- 
cured and roasted, as well as other things 
good to the palate of a hungry Indian. At 
about 4 'clock the bride was taken to a tepee 
set apart from the others, where some twenty 
squaw attendants dressed her out in a ^*rig" 
that for decoration resembled a general or 
an admiral 's uniform. 



76 THIKTY YEARS OK THE FRONTIER. 

Not wishing to get married at this time, 
she kept her attendants in tears by her lam- 
entations. Some one in Lander had sold her 
father an old hearse as being just the thing 
for a family carriage. The top had been 
taken off, but the plumes remained, and into 
it she was loaded. The horses were gaily 
decorated and an Indian walked at the head 
of each horse. As she took her seat in the 
carriage, I obtained the first good view of the 
bride. A description of her dress is impos- 
sible, but it was a curious mixture of every 
color imaginable. She had proceeded but 
a little way down the valley, when at 
breakneck speed came a buck and 
three squaws who were running to the 
bride. The first squaw to reach the 
bride was to receive her raiment, the sec- 
ond a pony and the third a blanket. The 
bride was escorted to a tepee belonging to a 
relative of the groom. Here she was placed 
on a blanket and wrapped up until no part of 
her was visible and then carried to the tepee 
set apart for the happy couple. Arriving 
there she was unwrapped in the presence of 
the guests and her clothing immediately 
claimed by the spuaw who came out best in 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 77 

the race. The bride was re-dressed, the 
groom summoned and seated on the blanket 
beside her. They were now married in the 
eyes of the Indians. Then came a feast, par- 
ticipated in only by the happy couple and the 
guests departed to the general feast. 

Three weeks had passed when one day an 
officer of the Indian police came to our camp 
and through him I learned of Cole's former 
camp on a tributary of Wind Eiver, and he 
said the gulches and sands of the stream were 
plentifully besprinkled with nuggets, that the 
reason white men were not there in multi- 
tudes was they were kept away by the Indian 
police. 

He said that Cole was permitted to stay 
because he furnished the Indians with whis- 
ky. This Cole doubtless made from drugs. 

At the end of another week my party re- 
turned without Cole. They came hastily and 
seemed in a hurry to get away. I asked if 
they found gold. They replied, **Yes, plenty 
of it, but Cole 's treachery has defeated every 
plan.'' Beyond this they would say noth- 
ing. 

As I was in no condition to accompany 
them and was as comfortable as circum- 



78 THIKTT YEAKS ON THE FKONTIER. 

stances would permit, they left me in the In- 
dian camp. Here I remained for a month 
longer, when Red Jacket and Spotted Horse 
rode with me to Rawlins. Two truer hearts I 
never expect to find among any race. I had 
our photographs taken and made them pres- 
ents, as well as sending a flour sack of can- 
dies back to the camp. When our train rolled 
away they stood on the platform and watched 
us out of sight. 

The mystery of the fate of Cole was cleared 
some years later when I called on one of the 
parties in Kansas City. It seems they reached 
Cole's cabin in the wilds of the Wind River 
country and that he showed them fine placer 
mines, and that after a few days he pro- 
duced a vile decoction of whisky which he and 
a younger member of the party drank. A 
quarrel between the two men, crazed with the 
drink, ensued, in which Cole was killed. 



XI. 



ACROSS THE PALM DESERT. 

An ancient fight — as ancient as the time 
dividing the bird from the serpent, a fight 
thousands of times repeated in the lonely 
places of the earth each year, but which man 
seldom sees, was witnessed by Mark Wither- 
spoon and myself on the borders of the Palm 
Desert in California, where we had come in 
the search for gold. It was a struggle to the 
finish between an eagle and a big rattlesnake. 
Death was the referee, as he is in all the con- 
tests waged under nature's code of fang and 
claw. 

There are two things men may not know, 
so it is said: *^The way of the serpent upon 
the rock; the eagle soaring in the sky." 
Each has a wonderful power which man does 
not understand — does not understand any 
more than he does why they always fight 
when they meet and that they always should 



80 THIBTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

and will, so long as there are serpents upon 
the rocks and eagles soaring in the sky. If 
there were no eagles, the rattlesnakes would 
have no enemy in the sky or upon the earth, 
save man, to fear. The eagle likewise has no 
fear of anything, unless it be the glistening 
yellow and brown poisonous creature of the 
rocks — the rattler. 

Thus it lives forever — the death feud of the 
eagle of the Montezumas and the serpent 
father of the Moki's — the rattler. 

How it began I did not see. I was standing 
near the top of a big stony crag that glistened 
in the bright light looking over the vast opens 
and great basins of the Palm Desert which 
we were to cross, when my attention was 
attracted by the flop of something striking 
the sands a hundred feet away. I could not 
see what it was, but a moment later I saw an 
eagle swoop down and rise slowly, holding 
within its mailed claws, a snake. The big 
bird soared up a hundred feet or more and 
shook the snake loose, which fell twisting and 
coiling with a distinctly audible ^ ' flop ' ' — the 
noise that first attracted my attention. 
Again and again the bird swooped, arose with 




Truer hearts I never expect to find (page 78). 



THIKTY YEAKS ON THE FKONTIER. 81 

the serpent and dropped it, while Wither- 
spoon drew closer and closer to watch. 

Then the eagle — a young one, as we could 
tell by its size and plumage — struck and 
failed to rise. Witherspoon was now close 
enough to see everything that happened. 

The young bird had almost exhausted it- 
self in its struggles with the snake, and may, 
too, have been bitten by it. At any rate, it 
was upon the sands, its wings slightly spread, 
as if from the heat — its mouth open. The 
snake was recovering from its jolting fall, 
and slowly gathering its coils. 

It rested a moment in position, and then 
struck the eagle, the fangs entering the cor- 
ner of the bird's mouth, in the soft tissues at 
the base of the beak. 

The eagle recovered from the shock, stood 
motionless a few seconds, while the rattler 
watched as only a rattler can, and spreading 
out its wings, toppled over. 

Then the man — man who hates serpents as 
the eagle does — put forth his hand, using a 
power more wonderful than that of either. 
There was a puff of white smoke in the clear 
air and the report of a pistol rang among the 
glistening wind-polished rocks, and the snake 



82 THIKTY YEAES ON" THE FKONTIEK. 

was a mangled, bright, still thing that the 
ants began to gather about. 

*^It was unjust maybe," remarked With- 
erspoon. ^'The snake had won fairly — he 
was entitled to go his way, a terror for all the 
furry little bright things hereabouts. ' ' ^ ^ But 
I couldn't help it.'' *^ Someway that slaying 
by poison, even if it is done in the open, 
doesn't seem fair. " ^ ' Then, too, a man hates 
to see the emblem of his country's armies and 
navies, the triumphant eagle of thunderbolts, 
lying in the sunshine dead, and that by a ser- 
pent. ' ' 

We had purchased a mustang in San Luis 
Obispo and loaded him with our stock of 
flour, bacon, frying pans, blankets, etc., and 
was resting on the borders of the Palm Des- 
ert, which we intended to cross the next 
morning, to the Mexican dry diggings, in the 
foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, 
when the battle between the eagle and rattler 
furnished the topic of conversation all the 
afternoon. From San Luis Obispo we had 
taken the trail that led over the mountains 
and through the beautiful Santa Margarita 
Valley. Of all the places I have ever seen, 
I think this valley came the nearest to being 



THIKTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 83 

an earthly paradise. It is seven miles in 
length, five in breadth, and is walled on all 
sides, except a narrow pass, by the lofty 
Santa Lncia Mountains. Through the center 
of the valley flows the headwaters of the 
Salanis Eiver. Giant live oak trees studded 
the valley at almost regular intervals, as if 
they had been planted by the hand of man. 
The earth was a carpet of green verdure, with 
splashes of the yellow wild mustard and var- 
ied hues of the many different semi-tropical 
flowers. Two days after passing through 
this Eden, we began our toilsome march 
across an arm of the Palm Desert. When 
we reached the diggings we found a group 
of motley Mexicans, who good naturedly 
swarmed about us and showed us a camping 
place near a spring, but its waters were so im- 
pregnated with sulphates of magnesia and 
sodium, that we found it impossible to use it. 
We moved our camp about a mile further up 
the canyon, near the quarters of a sheep 
herder, where we found good water and were 
free from the Mexicans. They taught us, 
however, the art of dry washing the gold 
from the loose earth of the placer claim which 
we had staked off. Here, for more than three 



84 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

months, we toiled. When our supplies run 
short, we sent for more by the man who came 
once a week to bring provisions and look 
after his interests on the sheep ranch. I al- 
ways pitied that sheep herder. He had sev- 
eral hundred to care for, and their continual 
bleating sounded dismally in the solitude of 
the mountains, and when he lighted his 
bivouac fire at night, it always seemed like a 
signal of distress. 

From the red earth we gathered the golden 
grains, and when the stars came out at night, 
and the mountains took on their shadowy 
gloom, we talked of home two thousand miles 
away, and often wondered at the enigma of 
creation. Then came a time when by exposure 
to the damp and dews, and living upon poor 
food, we both began to fall sick. Medicine 
was out of the question, and so with our pre- 
cious packet of gold dust upon our persons, 
we loaded our mustang with our camp equip- 
ments and took up our march toward San 
Luis Obispo. 

It was in the early dawn of the morning 
when we started across the arm of the Palm 
Desert. The sun rose like a ball of fire in a 
cloudless sky and heated the sands until they 



THIRTY YEAES ON THE FEONTIER. 85 

parched and blistered our faces. By noon 
our water supply was exhausted, and soon 
after I threw away the Winchester which I 
carried, for I could no longer bear the bur- 
den. If it has not been found by some weary 
pilgrim it lies there today with its barrel as 
bright in that rainless valley as it was when 
I threw it down. 

We walked in silence all that torrid after- 
noon. The poor mustang crept along, led by 
Mark, while we, with bloodshot eyes and fe- 
vered brains, could but feebly keep in sight 
the jutting mountain spur where we would 
find a haven of rest. 

Exliausted, I sat down in the scant shade of 
a desert palm. Its sparse branches rattled in 
the hot wind like dried sunflower stalks, and 
then, in my imagination, I stood a few feet 
away and saw myself lying dead on the sands, 
with face drawn and withered and dead eyes 
staring at the skies. 

I roused myself from the horrible dream 
and walked on. It was long after the sun had 
dipped beyond the mountain crest, and the 
Palm Desert was shrouded in the gloom of 
night, that we reached a pool of clear water, 
fed by a generous spring. We drank of its 



86 THIRTY YEARS OK THE FROHTIER. 

waters and bathed our fevered brows, and 
lay down in the warm sands to awake ever 
and anon in fitful dreams. It seemed I was 
buried in the stone coffins of Eg}^t, where I 
lay for a thousand years in torrid heat, with 
unquenchable thirst. Whenever I awoke, I 
drew myself to the edge of the pool, drank 
deeply of its refreshing waters, and fell 
asleep again, repeating the same thing per- 
haps twenty times during the night. 

How soon we forget our troubles, and oh, 
how soon we forget that we have passed 
through the valley of the shadow, and that a 
merciful God has watched over our destinies. 
Within a week after this, when Mark and I 
came so near perishing on the Palm Desert, 
we had purchased new summer clothes and 
were sitting about the best hotel in San Luis 
Obispo, smoking fine cigars and playing the 
part of high-toned young gentlemen gener- 
ally. 



XII. 

THE LAST STAND OF A DYING KACE. 

The battle of Wounded Knee, South Da- 
kota, occurred December 29, 1890. It was 
the last stand of a dying race, the last Indian 
battle fought on the soil of the United States. 

Whatever views I may have held at the 
time, and whatever part I may have taken in 
the engagement is mitigated by previous ex- 
periences and circumstances; but with time 
there comes a belief that somebody grievously 
erred. 

Nearly every nation in its decline has 
looked for the coming of a Redeemer to lead 
them back to the glory and valor of former 
days. This has been especially true of the 
Indian races. The few remaining Aztec 
tribes yet look for the coming of Montezuma, 
while the Indians in the mountains of Peru 
believe that Huascar will again appear and 
re-establish the magnificent empire of which 
the mailed heels of a conquering Pizarro host 



88 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

clanked the dying knell nearly four centuries 
ago. 

In the autumn of 1890 there appeared in an 
Indian village in Nevada a man who was 
strange to them and to the neighboring tribes. 
He told them a wondrous story. He had 
come from a far-off land beyond the setting 
sun, and was sent by the Great Spirit to res- 
cue the redmen from the oppression of the 
paleface, to restore to them their hunting 
grounds and to populate the plains once more 
with the buffalo and the antelope. He taught 
them a new form of the death dance and 
made a garment, decorated it with hiero- 
glyphics and blessed it, and said that it would 
turn the bullets of the white man. They re- 
ceived his tale with great rejoicing and start- 
ed immediately to carry the tidings to the 
tribes on the plains to the east. Great en- 
thusiasm among the Indians marked the 
progress of the march across the country, 
and when he reached the Eosebud Agency in 
South Dakota, so exaggerated were the won- 
drous stories that preceded him, he was fair- 
ly worshipped as a deity. Chiefs Eed Cloud, 
Crow Dog and Two Strikes brought him be- 



I— » 



o 
a. 



Crq 

00 




THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 89 

fore the Great Council at Pine Eidge Agency, 
some fifty miles distant from Eosebud. 

For more than three months after his ar- 
rival thousands of the Sioux warriors kept 
up the ghost dance almost nightly. The quan- 
tities of unbleached domestic that they were 
purchasing at the agency stores and making 
up into ^ ' ghost shirts, ' ' together with the am- 
munition they were known to be hoarding 
convinced the agency authorities at Pine 
Eidge that an outbreak was imminent. A call 
was made for United States troops, but be- 
fore any considerable number arrived hostili- 
ties had begun. A cattle herder was killed 
and a large herd of cattle belonging to the 
government was driven into the bad-lands. 
The same night Chief Eed Cloud, who had be- 
come almost blind in his extreme old age, was 
taken forcibly from his home near the Pine 
Eidge agency building and made to lead the 
hostile attack on the Jesuit Mission some 
four miles distant. A desultory firing was 
kept up on the agency for some nights after- 
ward, when a reinforcement of troops arrived 
and the hostiles withdrew to the natural fort- 
resses of the bad-lands. 

Chief American Horse appears to have 



90 THIRTY YEAES ON THE FRONTIER. 

doubted the divine origin of the Indian Mes- 
siah, and held in check some six or seven 
thousand of his people encamped on a creek 
near the agency. In the meantime General 
Miles arrived with a strong force of cavalry 
and artillery. Batteries were trained on the 
tepees of the Brule Sioux under American 
Horse, and they were ordered not to congre- 
gate, which order was respected up to the 
close of the campaign. 

Eumors of Indian depredations were of 
every day occurrence. Settlers were fleeing 
from their homes and seeking refuge in the 
villages. So great was the terror in north- 
western Nebraska that General John M. 
Thayer, then governor, ordered out the en- 
tire force of the National Guard, numbering 
about two thousand men, under Brigadier 
General Leonard W. Colby, to protect the Ne- 
braska frontier. 

The main body of hostiles was safely in- 
trenched in the bad lands and was only await- 
ing the springtime, when grass would furnish 
provender for their ponies; when they in- 
tended to begin their work of destruction on 
the white settlements. 

Up to this time no Indian had been killed 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FEOKTIER. 91 

or wounded, although there was some heavy 
firing done in defense of the mission and the 
agency. This fact tended to strengthen their 
belief in the invulnerability of the ghost shirt 
which, by this time, was worn by all the war- 
riors. So great was their faith in the effi- 
cacy of this garment to turn the bullets of 
their white foe, that Big Foot and a band of 
about four hundred ventured to leave the 
stronghold and commit some petty depreda- 
tions within thirty miles of Pine Eidge. 

General Miles promptly dispatched Colonel 
Forsythe and a troop of two companies of 
the Seventh Cavalry to subdue them. It will 
be remembered that the Seventh was General 
Custer's old regiment that met the Indians on 
the Little Big Horn on that memorable 25th 
of June, 1876, when every man taking part in 
the engagement was massacred by this same 
tribe of Sioux Indians which this detachment 
under Colonel Forsythe was seeking. On the 
evening of the twenty-eighth of December, 
Colonel Forsythe came upon Big Foot's 
band. No resistance was offered at the time, 
although the demeanor of the braves fore- 
boded the terrible tragedy soon to follow. 
The Indians were escorted some miles distant 



92 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

and ordered to go into camp on the banks of 
Wounded Knee Creek, which flows through a 
wide, open valley skirted for miles on either 
side by high, sandy bluffs and scant growth 
of fir, cedar and pine. The Indians were 
made to pitch their tepees in a semi-circle and 
park their wagons and ponies behind them. 
The soldiers formed in a triangle in front of 
the semi-circle with a Hotchkiss gun under 
conmiand of Sergeant Wingate in the center 
of the triangle. The men stood by their 
guns throughout the bitter cold of the Da- 
kota night, while the Indians were comfort- 
ably wrapped in their blankets within the 
shelter of the tepees. As the first rays of the 
sun were slanting across the bleak and cheer- 
less plain, the shrill notes of a bugle rang out 
on the frosty air. It was the signal to arouse 
the Indian camp. They came from their te- 
pees with blankets swathed about them, and 
desperation was stamped upon their faces. 
Big Foot, who was ill with pneumonia, was 
first carried out and laid upon a bed of fur 
in front of his tepee, and then two hundred 
and fifty braves seated themselves in rows 
about him. Through an interpreter they 
were ordered by Captain Wallace to lay down 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 93 

their arms. They were armed mostly with 
Winchesters which were concealed beneath 
the blankets about them. Suddenly the medi- 
cine man of the tribe sprang to his feet and 
threw a handful of dirt into the air. It was 
a signal, and in another instant the death-like 
shrieks — the Sioux war-cry, ^ ' Hi-yi-hip-yi ! ' ' 
echoed up and down the valley, and the blaze 
of two hundred Winchesters sent their deadly 
missiles into the faces of the soldiers not over 
thirty feet away. There was an instant of 
hush — then a crash of musketry, and the last 
Sioux Indian battle was on! There were 
wavering ranks of blue as men fell to the 
ground wounded or dying; frantic horses 
dashed riderless over the plain; forms in red 
blankets were running hither and thither as 
the deadly triangle poured a withering cross- 
fire into the struggling mass about the te- 
pees. There were swift retreats of small 
parties, followed by swifter pursuit of horse- 
men. Indians were shot right and left as the 
mellow cadence of the bugle said, ^^Fire at 
will." Squaws were dashing right and left, 
attempting to stab the soldiers with their 
long, copper-handled scalping knives; boys 
kneeled on the ground and coolly fired rifles 



94 THIKTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

at the soldiers. They, too, were shot, and 
meanwhile the terrible Hotchkiss gun boomed 
death. Small fleeing parties gained the sand 
bluffs and shot the pursuing soldiers. A 
wagon, drawn by two ponies and loaded with 
bucks and squaws who were trying to get 
away, was struck by a six-inch shell and liter- 
ally blown to pieces. Brave Captain Wallace 
was killed with a blow from a stone battle-ax 
as he was entering a tepee. 

The field of carnage is a dreadful sight. 
The mind shrinks from contemplating it. Hu- 
man life has there passed away. Agony and 
suffering is everywhere. Gloom is on men's 
faces and dark frowns on their brows. One 
wishes it were effaced from memory, for in 
years to come one must see in fancy and hear 
again in fitful slumber the dying shrieks and 
piteous cries of agony. 

That evening the sun set behind a bank of 
crimson clouds. Sickening odors came from 
the smouldering tepees. Stark faces, stiffen- 
ing in death, were turned to the skies. There, 
too, were the wounded with the dew of death 
already upon their brows. Strong lines were 
drawn upon the faces of the dead that told of 
the awful desperation of the soul at the mo- 



THIETY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 95 

ment they fell. Weapons were clutched in 
pulseless hands, and piteous was the sight of 
the struggling, wounded horses in their vain 
attempt to join their mates in the wild chase 
among the hills. Amid these scenes could be 
heard the prattle of childish voices about the 
Indian tepees. In the tenderness of their 
years and the savagery of their nature they 
were unable to comprehend the awfulness of 
the hour. "When darkness came over the scene 
like a pall, the booming gun had ceased, but 
the plains were aglow with the lurid fires in 
the high grass — a weird and fantastic scene. 
Two hours later and the crimson clouds, 
which at sunset had portended evil, burst into 
fury, and a blizzard, with icy winds and drift- 
ing snows, raged as if to aid the soldiers in 
their determination that no living thing 
should survive the day. 

When, four days later, the winds had spent 
their fury, and General Colby was riding 
over the field with his party, a cry was heard 
from a snow-bank that covered the dead bod- 
ies of some squaws. A soldier dismounted 
and found an Indian pappoose tied to its dead 
mother's back, and clasped in the child's 
arms was a soiled, little rag doll which the 



96 THIKTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

baby fonglit to retain. General Colby imme- 
diately had the little waif cared for and after- 
wards adopted her. The Indians named her 
^^Ziutka Lannni/' which in the white man^s 
tongue means ' ' Lost Bird. ' ' She is now liv- 
ing at the home of Mrs. L. W. Colby in Wash- 
ington, D. C, a beautiful Indian girl, well ed- 
ucated, speaking the tongue of the white man, 
for she never had the opportunity to learn 
the language of her people. 

A few days after the battle the great Sioux 
chief. Sitting Bull, was slain by the Indian 
police. The news of the battle spread among 
the hostile Indians. They learned that the 
much prized ghost shirt was no protection 
against the white man's bullets, and the clos- 
ing scene of this drama occurred some weeks 
later when the hills about Pine Eidge agency 
fairly swarmed with returning hostiles. 

No conquered general in the history of the 
world ever met the conqueror with haughtier 
mien than did Two Strikes, the untutored 
savage, chief of the hostile band, when he 
made his formal surrender to General Miles. 
Followed by half a dozen lesser chiefs, he 
strode majestically toward the agency school 
building in front of which stood General 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 97 

Miles and aides waiting to receive him. His 
magnificent form was erect, his head, proud- 
ly decked with the eagle feather, was thrown 
slightly back, while every muscle of his face 
was as tense as steel. His warrior robes were 
draped about his shoulders, while his arms 
were folded across a carbine upon his breast. 
With measured tread he approached and 
halted in front of General Miles and met the 
mild blue eye of that warrior with black, 
piercing eyes that fairly blazed fire. Stead- 
ily the two men gazed at each other for more 
than a minute. The muscles of the Indian ^s 
face twitched and the proud lips essayed to 
speak — as though he would hurl a torrent of 
defiance and hatred into the conqueror ^s face. 
With one swift movement he laid the carbine 
at the generaPs feet, stood erect another in- 
stant gazing with defiant eyes — and strode 
away to join his people. 



XIII. 

THE TRAGEDY OF THE LOST MINE. 

In 1879, Capt. Charles Watt and Irwin 
Baker built a cabin in a gulch some miles dis- 
tant from where Cripple Creek now stands. 
Baker had in his possession samples of very- 
rich gold-bearing ore which he claimed to 
have brought from Arizona, where he and a 
Mexican had been driven out by Indians, as 
their reservation at that time extended over 
that region of country. The Mexican after- 
wards died of wounds received in the 
fight, and Baker was the sole possessor of 
the secret of the mine. He would sit for 
hours and tell how they had dug the white 
quartz which was threaded and beaded with 
strings of gold, and hoarded vast quantities 
of it under a great shelving rock which bore 
evidence of having at one time been the home 
of the Cliff Dwellers. And how he had care- 
fully made a map of the country and intended 
when the Indian troubles were over to hire 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 99 

a sufficient force of men and burros to go 
there and bring away enough of the treasure 
to fix him in comfortable circumstances for 
the rest of his life. He often spoke of the 
map which he kept carefully concealed among 
his effects, which consisted of a valise and 
some mining tools. 

In the fall of 1879 Baker concluded to make 
a trip to Leadville, which was then in the 
height of prosperity, and taking his rifle, 
blankets, and a few days' rations, set out on 
foot. He reached Leadville safely, and a few 
days later died of pneumonia. As no one 
claimed the few chattels, including the valise, 
which Baker left behind. Captain Watt as a 
matter of course took them. He searched 
everywhere for the map by which Baker set 
so much store, and not finding it, concluded 
it was concealed about his clothing and had 
been doubtless buried with him. And so years 
passed on, but the straight story the man had 
so often told around the cabin fire in the 
silence of night, was never forgotten by Watt, 
who, in the lonely hours among the towering 
peaks of the Rocky Mountains, had thought 
of it a thousand times. 



100 THIETY YEARS ON THE FEONTIER. 

But one day, the hand of Fate and Chance 
took a part. 

Captain Watt needed a strip of leather. 
There was none to be found. Finally, his eye 
rested upon the old valise which had once 
been the property of Irwin Baker, which had 
tumbled about prospectors' cabins for the 
last ten years. It was worn out, but the sides 
would make the strip of leather the captain 
wanted. The first slash of his knife revealed 
between the outside and the lining a folded 
sheet of paper, yellowed with age, and a 
closer examination proved it to be the care- 
fully prepared map which Irwin Baker had 
concealed ten years before. The lines were 
drawn with the skill of a civil engineer, and 
the places so plainly marked that a party in- 
stantly formed, believed they would have no 
difficulty in going straight to the lost mine. 

Three others, myself and Captain Baker 
staked our time and money on the venture, 
and another month found us in the country 
called Coconino in Arizona through which the 
Colorado Eiver crosses with many a curve 
and twist. It lies in the northern part of the 
great Colorado plateau and west of the Moqui 
country. 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 101 

Jolin Bowden, a young civil engineer, was 
one of our party. He had studied at Ann 
Arbor and also at the University of Minne- 
sota. His field work covered about five years 
prior to joining us. He was not familiar with 
the Southwest, its climate and peculiar topog- 
raphy, but others of the party were, and in 
view of his knowledge of civil engineering he 
was considered a valuable man to us. 

The sun shines in Coconino. It hangs day 
after day above Lava Butte, the Painted Des- 
ert, Shinumo Altar, and the Black Falls, as if 
it were a destroying angel, not the kindly orb 
that flashes in the northern belt, but a con- 
suming, terrifying demon of the desert 
wastes from which there is no escape. Those 
who toil in the city's ways think the sun is 
hot, that the humidity is deadly, that pain 
such as theirs is unknown. They have never 
looked up to the solar star from the buttes of 
Coconino. There, blazing through the cen- 
tury-dried air all that is inhuman in stellar 
heat feeds upon the brain, the senses of man, 
until he staggers over the sands and falls to 
death. 

Our party had made its way north of Mesa 
Butte, carrying provisions and water, mak- 



102 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

ing slow progress, enduring extraordinary 
discomforts. It was after we had camped at 
the Little Colorado on the south bank, that 
Bowden and I, acting upon the advice of Cap- 
tain Watt, made some advance explorations 
to determine how best we should approach 
Lava Butte, which, according to Baker's map, 
was the key to the route to the lost mine. 

We left one morning before sunrise and 
headed due north for the Painted Desert. 
We carried with our horses a two days ' sup- 
ply of water and provisions. It was impos- 
sible after ten o'clock in the morning to ad- 
vance farther in the heat. We camped in the 
swale of a dry arroya, making such shade as 
we could, and waited for the coming of the 
late afternoon, when we might press on a lit- 
tle more. Bowden attempted some observa- 
tions, but found that his sight was affected 
and that he must rest. In the evening and 
before we halted for the night, Lava Butte 
was in sight. After supper, Bowden said he 
would walk a distance under the stars; and 
that he would return to the camp within an 
hour. 

He had not returned by midnight, and I 
dared not leave the horses and search for 



THIBTY YEAKS ON THE FRONTIEK. 103 

him, but I fired my rifle as a signal at short 
intervals throughout the night. The next 
day I tried to find him, firing my rifle now 
and then, until I had burned the last car- 
tridge, and then I made a fire of dried cactus 
stalks, in hopes that the smoke would attract 
his attention, but all this failed. The water 
supply began to run short, the horses were 
suffering, and Bowden did not appear. I 
then headed back for camp on the Little Colo- 
rado, intending to follow our trail in the 
sands, but the hot winds had swept over the 
desert and obliterated most of them. I had 
depended upon Bowden 's qualities as an en- 
gineer and had not taken as close an observa- 
tion as I would otherwise. However, I re- 
membered my experience in the Palm Desert 
of years before, and so urged my horse along 
through the torrid heat, always heading for a 
jutting butte where I thought our camp to be. 
At noon my horse died, and I lay in the shade 
of some rocks, giving myself up for lost, 
when, as the sun was going down and the 
shadows were creeping over the desert, I 
descried the relief party from our camp that 
was searching for us. 

Bowden 's body was found five miles from 



104 THIRTY YEAES ON THE FRONTIER. 

the camp he and I had made. He had walked 
in the night through the dead land, where, in 
starlight or sunlight, all things look alike. 
But there is so much white and so much grey, 
that to distinguish one object from another, 
to remember it, to say, ^^I will come back to 
this," is not possible. So when Bowden 
started to retrace his steps, he did not know 
where he was. The plain was all north, 
south, east and west. 

He quite evidently had sat down and tried 
to collect his thoughts, for there were marks 
in the waste indicating the various positions 
he had taken. He had a small bottle of water 
with him, but no food. 

No sound swept the plain. Bowden may 
have thought he was entombed in some vast 
charnel-house of the ages to which Time had 
brought Nature's remains and left them 
without burial. He was on the crest of one- 
time vast lava beds, a spot where fearful 
fires once raged beneath his feet. Here the 
last great battle of the peaks of the continent 
had probably been fought with thunderbolt 
and flame hurled from the bowels of the 
earth. And he was alone. Not even the 
wretched lizards of the lava region were 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 105 

moving. He called. No voice answered. 
He walked, but it was in a circle, and he came 
back time and time again to his starting 
point. He waited for the dawn — one hope 
that the sun's light might give him a trace of 
the camp. He saw the shade of the night 
grow deeper and deeper, and then the driving 
of this blackness back from the east and the 
coming there of a cold line of grey and then 
an insolent one of red and a savage yellow 
with that, and then, with one leap, the sun. 

He must have scanned the plain, but there 
was no sight of camp. He called, he laughed, 
he cried. He drank his water to the last drop 
in the little bottle. He walked and ran. He 
returned to the spot where he had first be- 
come bewildered. He was hot and then cold, 
and the sun rose higher and higher; grew 
more pitiless with every advance. The white 
heat beat down on him; it rose in sheets be- 
fore him. Now the lizzards and the mean, 
creeping things came out, but they passed 
him by. They could wait. Others had pre- 
ceded him. After a long time, Bowden threw 
his hands high in the air, far up to the sun 
god that was calling to him, although beating 
him down. He fell flat on his face, and there 



106 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

he slept his last sleep in the land where the 
sun shines forever and forever. 

A week later and Captain Watt died of gas- 
tritis, and our party returned to Flagstaff 
and abandoned the search for the lost mine. 



XIV. 

THE LAND OF THE FAIR GOD. 

Captain David L. Payne was a born fron- 
tiersman. He left his home in Grant County, 
Indiana, in 1856, at the age of 20 years. He 
started west to fight the Mormons, and got 
as far as Doniphan County, Kansas. Here 
he found plenty of excitement and joined the 
Free Soil party. Five years later, when the 
border was aflame with fire and steel, he was 
among the first to enlist in the Union army. 
He served with distinction throughout the 
war. In 1865 he was honorably discharged 
at Ft. Leavenworth, with the rank of major. 
After this he went to Pueblo de Taos, New 
Mexico, and joined a party under Kit Car- 
son, in an expedition against the Apaches. 
And after this he was known as the ^ * Cimar- 
ron Scout. ' ^ 

I first met him in the Black Hills in 1876, 
He was then talking of Oklahoma, called by 
the Indians The Land of the Fair God. He 



108 THIKTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

claimed that the government had no title to 
the land. The next I noticed of him was in 
1880, when he organized a band of raiders 
to invade Oklahoma and open it for settle- 
ment. His first company was thirteen strong. 
They went as far south as Fort Russell, on 
the Cimarron, leaving Arkansas City, April 
30. They were captured and taken out by 
United States soldiers. But the brave pio- 
neer was not to be daunted. His followers 
increased and they hovered upon the banks 
of the Arkansas River, awaiting the action 
of a dilatory congress at Washington until 
the country was thrown open to settlement, 
April 22, 1889. 

Payne was like many other pioneers. He 
saw the land of promise, but dared not enter 
therein and live. Fate reserved this boon 
for others, while death decreed the brave soul 
should explore another bourne than this. 
While sitting at a breakfast table in Welling- 
ton, Kansas, December, 1884, he suddenly 
expired. Others may have felt as much in- 
terest in the opening of Oklahoma as Payne, 
but certainly none others devoted so much 
time and energy to the accomplishment of 
this work as he. He began the movement at 



THIKTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 109 

a time when it was very unpopular, hence 
was the object of much unfavorable criticism 
and abuse, but he did not allow this to daunt 
him, and continued to surround himself with a 
class of followers who had the nerve to stand 
for the right. 

On the opening day the people came. They 
represented every part of the Union — from 
the granite hills of Maine to the flowery bor- 
ders of California, and from the northern 
lakes to the gulf. They formed one of the 
most cosmopolitan communities ever assem- 
bled in the United States, and as if by com- 
mon consent all sectional prejudices were laid 
aside in one common interest of beginning 
life anew. Wlien the shadows of night fell 
around and about them on that memorable 
day, Guthrie, the territorial capital, was a 
tented city. The rush for lands and lots was 
over ; and men sat quietly about their bivouac 
fires discussing the exciting events of the 
day. It was a triumph for American man- 
hood and education ; that the day passed off 
peaceably, and a triumph for which Okla- 
homans may well feel proud when the turbu- 
lence of the times are considered. Practi- 
cally there was no law save that administered 



110 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

by the United States military, until the or- 
ganic act was effected, May 2, 1890, when 
Geo. W. Steele was appointed governor. 

At the first session of the Territorial Leg- 
islature, a bill was introduced to remove the 
capital to Oklahoma City. When it was about 
to be placed upon its passage Arthur Daniels, 
the Speaker of the House, seized the bill and 
started on a run for the Santa Fe depot, 
where a special engine was waiting. Nearly 
all the members of the legislature started in 
pursuit, firing their revolvers at the fleeing 
speaker. He safely eluded them; and as the 
term of the legislature expired by law that 
night, the capital was saved to Guthrie. 

Hammers and saws could be heard night 
and day. Men were building a city. In an 
incredible short space of time, palatial resi- 
dences, business blocks and church spires 
rose upon what, a short time since, had ben 
a barren plain. They had added another dot 
on the map. 

The administration of Governor Steele was 
soon followed by the appointment of Gov- 
ernor A. J. Seay, an heroic figure on the 
federal side during the war of the rebellion, 
an able and kindly man whom history will 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. Ill 

revere. He was just the man for the times, 
for he always had a pleasant word or sound 
advice when occasion offered. He had the 
happy faculty of always looking at the bright 
side of life, and when speaking invari- 
ably put his audience in a good humor, as at 
the close of his term of office, in an address 
he said he always took an interest in the 
scriptural saying, ^*If a man die, shall he live 
again r' The crowd saw the point and gave 
a cheer for the retiring old hero so beloved 
by all. 

About this time E. D. Nix was appointed 
United States marshal of the Territory. To 
Marshal Nix and his faithful deputies belong 
the credit of the suppression of outlawry in 
Oklahoma. At the time he was appointed in 
May, 1903, the country was overrun by a 
banditti that rivaled the noted James and 
Younger brothers, in Missouri. There was 
no safety for life or property outside the 
larger towns. Trains were held up, banks 
were looted, stores robbed, and travelers 
were murdered upon the highway. 

To the young marshal, then only thirty 
years of age, it meant a long and bitter fight 
ahead, costing the lives of ninety-one deputy 



112 THIRTY YEAES ON THE FRONTIER. 

marshals, and over one and one-half million 
dollars to the government. 

It was a fight to the death, but the young 
marshal was equal to the emergency, and the 
emergency confronted him. One by one the 
desperate bands were either captured or 
went down beneath the unerring aim of the 
faithful deputies; who were all skilled fron- 
tiersmen. 

These men were inured to hardships, many 
had been on the cattle trails, and had burned 
cartridges in more than one Indian fight, 
some had been marshals of Abilene, Dodge 
City and other frontier towns in their days 
of lawlessness. 

The time will come when men will paint 
them, write verses about them, as they de- 
serve to be written about. These men who 
bared their breasts to outlaw's bullets, as did 
deputies Bill Tighlman, W. W. Painter, John 
Hixon, Heck Thomas, Ed Kelley, Chris Mad- 
son, Wm. Banks, Frank Canton, John Hale, 
Frank Ehinehart and many others and to the 
heroic dead, such as Tom Houston, Lafe 
Shadley, Dick Speed, Jim Masterson and 
nearly a hundred others who fell as nobly as 
any soldier upon the battlefield in country's 




Chief Big Foot (page 91). 



X 



THIKTY YEARS ON THE FEONTIEE. 113 

cause, for it was in country's cause in which 
they fell. The graves of these dead heroes 
should be decorated, as they will be in time 
when Oklahomans stop long enough in their 
monied pursuits to give thought to services 
rendered by these noble lives. 

A bushwhacking war was waged by the 
outlaws for more than three years. As soon 
as one leader bit the dust there was another 
to take his place. They were in bands of 
from ten to twenty and had their rendezvous 
in the dark forests of the Chickasaw Indian 
nation, the Grand Eiver hills of the Osage 
Indian country or the Glass Mountains in the 
extreme west of Oklahoma. Often they would 
meet at a given point, do some daring act of 
train robbery, then scatter like quails with an 
agreed place of meeting; perhaps a hundred 
and fifty miles away. They were like the 
Insurgents of Cuba. No organized force could 
reach them. They knew every bridle path in 
the woods, or trail on the plains. Nothing 
prevailed but an Indian mode of warfare; 
but by long perseverance Marshal Nix's force 
conquered. 

Bill Dalton was killed. Bill Doolin, Arkan- 
san Tom, Tulsa Jack, George Newcomb, and 



114 THIETY YEABS ON THE FRONTIER. 

Buck Weightman, alias, **Eed Eock/* all not- 
ed outlaw leaders in time bit the dust, while 
Bill Eaidler fell ^'bleeding at every pore*^ 
from a shotgun in the hands of Marshal Heck 
Thomas. 

Tearing open his shirt and looking at his 
bleeding breast as full of small holes as the 
lid of a pepper box, Eaidler exclaimed, ^ ^ Heck 
you damned scoundrel, haven't you any more 
respect for me; than to shoot me with bird 
shot,* * * * Only used them for packing, my dear 
boy, only packing, you will find plenty of 
buck shot among them,** said Heck, as he 
slipped the cold steel cuffs on Eaidler *s 
wrists. 



XV. 

OUTLAWKY IN OKLAHOMA. 

Bill Doolin, noted outlaw, was in the United 
States jail in Guthrie, Oklahoma. A chill, 
drizzling rain was falling and the night was 
dark. The half breed Indians and white bor- 
der ruffians who had been his companions in 
the jail for the last two months, had grown 
tired of their card playing and had sullenly 
slunk off to their dirty bunks. Doolin had 
a cell of his own, but it had not yet been lock- 
ed for the night and he had the freedom of 
the **bull pen.'' Near the front of the large 
room was a partition of steel bars. Outside 
this partition was a stove, near which a dep- 
uty marshal sat reading a novel. Another 
deputy was pacing the floor. Doolin was 
thinking of a night like this when he and his 
men lay in waiting at Eed Eock for the Santa 
Fe express. How the chill rain dripped from 
their broad hats as they held a final whisper- 
ed conversation just before the glaring eye 



116 THIETY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

of the headlight of the express flashed on 
them for an instant as the train rounded a 
curve, then the shrill whistle. How he blessed 
the dark night, and how he cursed the mud, 
for it would leave a trail, easy for the deputy 
marshals to follow. 

It was action now, the panting engine had 
stopped at the water tank, the fireman had 
drawn down the great nozzle of the water 
pipe and was filling his tender. He struck 
the signal match across the butt of his revol- 
ver. Another instant and his men was 
swarming over the tender with revolvers at 
the heads of engineer and fireman. No time 
to lose. Uncouple the express car. All 
aboard, and the frightened engineer is com- 
pelled to run his engine five miles farther on 
and slow up at a creek crossing, where there 
are other men and horses. A demand is 
made of the express messenger to open his 
car, his answer is a bullet through the door. 
Then Eaidler crawls under the car and be- 
gins sending Winchester bullets through the 
bottom of the car at random. One of the 
bullets strikes the brave messenger in the 
head. They hear him fall with a groan. 
Quick, the dynamite, an explosion and the 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 117 

door of the express ear is blown open. The 
pockets of the dead messenger are rifled, the 
key to the Wells-Fargo express box is found 
and next the iron chest is open. No time to 
count the big packages of currency and seal- 
ed bags of gold now. To the horses, and then 
to the Glass Mountains. For this and other 
crimes, death or imprisonment for life now 
awaited him. Oh, why did he let Bill Tight- 
man take him single handed at Eureka 
Springs where he thought he was safe in mas- 
querading as an honest farmer from Texas. 

A sudden pause in his thoughts, an idea 
struck Doolin, people knew they had gotten 
over $100,000 from the express company, and 
that money ought to be somewhere. 

Doolin took a card from his pocket and a 
pencil and drew a map. Walking over to the 
iron grating he motioned to the guard. 

^^My heart hurts me tonight,'' he said, 
*^and I am afraid I am going to die.** I 
wouldn't mind all this so much if it wasn't 
for my boy with his mother over in the Osage 
nation, but I hate to see that boy go the way 
I have. If I could find a good man I'd make 
him my boys ' guardian and fix him for life. ' ' 



118 THIETY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

The guard stopped and came over to the 
iron grating. 

**It is like this/' continued Doolin. ^'I 
have got $30,000 in gold for some good man 
who will bring that boy up in the way he 
should go and be a father to him, get him 
interested in some profession, and make 
a man of him. I am done for sure and I be- 
lieve I am going to die tonight, oh, how my 
heart hurts, why not you get my money and 
be a father to my boy, I believe you would do 
the honest thing by him, then I could die 
easier.'' 

The guard looked over at his companion to 
see if he had heard. No, he was still read- 
ing the novel. He looked at Doolin and nod- 
ded. Then he drew close to the iron bars. 

Doolin whispered, ^^I will trust you," and 
drew from his pocket the card on which he 
had drawn a map. 

**Now stand close," he said, **and see 
if you can understand this, — here is the Bear 
Creek road in Pawnee county, here the ford, 
here a rock, ten feet to the south of this rock 
dig three feet and there is $30,000." 

The guard did not quite understand and 
drew closer to the bars and took the card. 



THIETY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 119 

While he was waiting, a long thin hand 
reached through the grating to the handle of 
his six shooter and in a second he was peer- 
ing down the muzzle of his own revolver in 
the hands of Bill Doolin. 

*'Keep perfectly quiet/' said the outlaw, 
you know me, open that bull pen door very 
quietly, ' ' 

The guard silently obeyed. *^Step in,'' 
said Doolin, the guard stepped inside. The 
next thing and he with the novel was staring 
into the quick blue eye of Doolin and the ugly 
thing he held cocked in his hand. 

' ' This way boys, ' ' said Doolin, and the two 
guards followed him to his cell. When they 
were inside he locked the door, then he called 
for their cartridge belts and the revolver, 
which he with the novel still had about him. 

In five minutes he was inside a heavy rain 
coat, had the guards ' midnight lunches stored 
in its pockets, a heavy Winchester in his hands 
and a hundred rounds of ammunition belted 
about him. Out into the night, and on to the 
street where some belated revelers' horses 
were tied. He gathered up the reins of a 



120 THIETY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

fleet mustang and mounting into the saddle — 
''Richard was himself again.'* 

9r TT vK^ W mf 't 

For two years, I had been in the govern- 
ment secret service. I had no visible means 
of support except that of a newspaper cor- 
respondent. My reports for Marshal Nix's 
office always went by a circuitous route, 
lest I be discovered, to have had my business 
known would have meant death. Even Mar- 
shal Nix never knew the real source of much 
information which reached his office. 

I thought the outlaws were making a ren- 
dezvous at the little town of Ingrim, and I de- 
termined to see for myself. Going to the of- 
fice of the Daily Leader, I secured a job at 
very poor pay to write up some towns in Okla- 
homa. Suddenly, under pretext of an affection 
in the head I became quite deaf. I knew bet- 
ter than go to the town of Ingrim first, lest 
I might excite suspicion. So I began at Te- 
cumseh some thirty miles from Ingrim. I 
stayed in the town a week, solicited subscrip- 
tions and wrote up the prospects of the place, 
said many flattering things of the business 
men in my write-up, and when the papers 
came, I distributed them. The people were 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 121 

pleased with my work, but some complained 
at having to talk so loud to make me under- 
stand. 

When I finished with Tecumseh, I rode 
with the mail carrier over to Ingrim. Sure 
enough here were my outlaws. They loafed 
about the only hotel and saloon, but were al- 
ways on the alert. I appeared to take no no- 
tice of anything, but kept boreing people to 
subscribe for my paper, interviewing mer- 
chants and writing up the town. The mer- 
chants, I discovered were glad to have the 
outlaws there, for they spent money like 
water, they paid big prices for their cartridges 
and bought heavy supplies of canned goods, 
which they sent away to be cached in the 
woods and hills for a time of need. 

One day I was sitting alone on the hotel 
veranda reading, when I heard a man say to 
another, ^^I am going to see if that dam 
cuss is deaf or not. ' ' I heard his cat like step 
approaching, and then, click, click, he cocked 
his revolver at the back of my head. 

It was a trying moment, but I did not move, 
I did not dare to, for had I quickly turned 
my head, I would have betrayed myself and 
lost my life. 



122 THIKTY YEARS ON" THE FEONTIER. 

When he was satisfied that I was deaf as 
a door nail, he invited me to drink. I excused 
myself, and I heard him tell the other man 
that I did not have the sense of a muskrat. 

When I left town I owed the hotel man for 
my last days board, which I promised to send 
to him, I did this for effect, and went in an 
opposite direction from Guthrie. 

Three days later and two emigrant 
wagons with farmer like men driving the 
teams came down the long red road that leads 
from the north into Ingrim. 

An outlaw outrider saw them and rode 
casually down the road. He engaged the 
driver of the first wagon in conversation a 
moment, and riding to the side of the wagon 
he lifted the edge of the cover with his rifle, 
and there saw six armed deputy marshals on 
the hay inside. The outlaw wheeled his horse 
and rode furiously back to the village, wav- 
ing his broad white hat as a signal. 

The marshals hurried from the wagons and 
the battle was on. 

Twenty minutes of sharp fighting and the 
outlaws were fleeing from the town on swift 
horses leaving one of their wounded behind, 
while the wagons that brought the marshals, 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 123 

carried four of their number back to Guthrie 
dead. 

Almost at the same hour that afternoon, 
another tragedy was being enacted in the 
dark forests of the Osage Indian Nation. 
Deputy Heck Thomas had tracked Bill Doolin 
to his lair. He was sleeping under a rude 
shelter of branches in the forest, when the 
breaking of a twig awoke him. He saw Heck 
Thomas alone ; not fifty feet away, and knew 
it was a duel to the death. 

Leaping behind a barricade of logs he 
opened fire on Thomas who had sought the 
shelter of a tree. The duel lasted an hour, 
each jeering the other. Thomas held his hat 
to one side of the tree and when Doolin sent 
a bullet through it, he sank apparently help- 
less to the ground. A long silence followed. 
Doolin again jeered the marshal. There was 
no answer. He came from behind his barri- 
cade to see the effect of his shot, and received 
a bullet through the brain. 

It is worthy of mention here that when a 
company of Eough Riders for the Spanish 
war was organized in Oklahoma, a son of 
Marshal Tilghlman and a son of Heck 



124 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

Thomas were among the first to enlist, and 
afterwards stormed the heights of San Juan 
hill with Colonel Roosevelt. 



XVI. 

A NEW LAND OF CANAAN. 

It was September of 1893. The Cherokee 
Strip, a large area of country in the Indian 
Territory, was about to be offered for settle- 
ment. 

Guthrie, Oklahoma, was at this time filled 
with homeseekers who were camped about on 
vacant lots, in their wagons. They were men 
of good intentions. There was also a horde 
of gamblers and petty thieves who swarmed 
like ravening wolves scenting their prey. Sa- 
loons and gambling houses were open day 
and night, and many a poor fellow fell into 
the hands of these legalized bandits — to 
awaken from the effects of drugged liquor 
and find themselves robbed of every dollar 
they possessed, and their families without a 
day's provisions ahead. 

Never was there an American town where 
morals were at a lower ebb than Guthrie was 
at that time. Street quarrels were frequent. 



126 THIETY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

and men shot each other down in cold blood 
for trivial offenses. There were contests 
over claims in Oklahoma proper, and it was 
no uncommon thing for a witness to be shot 
down after he had finished testifying in the 
land office. Or perhaps he was called to his 
door at midnight to stop a bullet, or was shot 
through a window while sitting at home with 
his family. 

Highway robbery, burglary, thieving, per- 
jury, gambling and whisky-drinking ran riot. 
Courtesans and harlots, with painted faces 
and tinseled dresses, plied their arts of con- 
quest in open day; while city officials, not 
to be outdone in the practices of the hour, 
took all manner of bribes from all manner of 
men. This state of immorality generated a 
stench over the town that all the perfume of 
Arabia the Blest could not sweeten. 

The Dalton gang of bandits was robbing 
Santa Fe trains in the Cherokee Strip, while 
more than one hundred and fifty United 
States marshals were searching for outlaws. 
"When one was found, however, he was usual- 
ly shot first and the warrant for his arrest 
read to the corpse. 

The men assembled at Guthrie at this time 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 127 

were from all quarters of the United States, 
and represented almost every nationality. 
As one rider dashed up the street on a very 
fine horse, a gust of wind lifted his sombrero 
and landed it near where I stood. I picked it 
up and was in the act of handing it to him 
when he exclaimed : * ' Hello, Bob, you here ! ' ' 

^^Yes,'' I replied, scanning his face for an 
instant before recognizing him. Then the 
face came back to me with pleasant memories. 
He was my old friend — Mark Witherspoon. 
The reunion was, indeed, pleasant to both of 
us, and it was late that night before we re- 
tired to our respective abodes. 

Mark had jostled about from pillar to post, 
in all parts of the world ; he had been in the 
mining camps of Australia and on the Eand 
in South Africa; he had grown rich several 
times and lost all again and again, and now 
he wanted an Oklahoma farm where, he con- 
cluded, he would settle down and live quietly. 
Just as though wild and impulsive natures 
like his could ever be content with a simple 
farming life. We agreed to make the run to- 
gether and, if possible locate our farms be- 
side each other. 

When the opening day came, a blazing 



128 THIETY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

southern sun beat down upon the heads of 
more than one hundred thousand men drawn 
upon the line that marked the border of the 
new El Dorado. Most of the country on the 
southern border lay in high ridges, or in val- 
leys and deep ravines, which, in some places, 
were 100 feet in depth, with precipitous ledg- 
es of rock on either side. The country was 
but sparsely covered with timber and nearly 
void of water at this season of the year. The 
few streams were impregnated with a 
mineral poison which had an evil effect for 
a long time on the systems of those who drank 
the water. Yet these men — many of whom 
had pioneered the plains of Nebraska and 
Kansas — were forced, by the conditions of 
the times, to seek new homes in this wild 
waste. For more than a year, more than 20,- 
000 families had lived like rats in dugouts 
along the banks of the Arkansas Eiver, to the 
north. To say they lived is a mistake — they 
only existed. Parched corn and potatoes com- 
prised the daily diet of hundreds. The win- 
ter of 1892 had been unusually severe for that 
section, and scant clothing and a lack of fuel 
added to the bitter suffering, while innumer- 
able mounds of yellow earth stood silent 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 129 

monuments to those who braved the vicissi- 
tudes of the frontier in the hope of gaining 
homes. 

In this new promised land there were some 
seventy Indian allotments to be made. These 
were located by government officials near 
townsites, for personal selfish purposes. 

Then came an order from the Secretary of 
the Interior that all who would file on lands 
must register. That caused men to form in 
ranks miles long, to await their turn to reg- 
ister. It caused delay, and filled the pockets 
of government officials who, for pay, gave 
preference to the men of money. For days 
these men stood in line — a blazing sun 
above, and treeless, waterless plains about. 
Many sickened and were carried away to die, 
and, when the merciful night came, the 
others lay down on the bare, hard ground, to 
dream of happy homes — and shiver in the 
chill autumn darkness. The towns were plat- 
ted by government employes. These plats 
contained false reservations for parks, and 
were sold to the men in line at a dollar each. 

When we reached the line, a mighty cara- 
van was there waiting, stretching as far as 
the eye could see, east and west, to the dim 



130 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

horizon on either side. Men were there with 
their families; in white covered wagons, in 
light running rigs and on horseback. Among 
them were the broad-hatted, swarthy fellows 
from the pampas and chapparalls of Texas. 
They were there from the deserts of New 
Mexico and Arizona. Old soldiers in the tat- 
tered blue of the Grand Army of the Eepublic 
were among the strugglers for homes. Just 
in front of all was another line, composed of 
the troops who were there to see that all kept 
back of the starting mark until the signal 
should be given. The gleam of the rifle 
could be seen in both lines. It was a thrilling 
scene; one upon which no man could look 
without mingled feelings of admiration and 
pity. 

The signal for many to start to the eternal 
promised land came as the weary hours wore 
along. Worn with fatigue and exposure, and 
fainting from sunstroke and thirst, many fell 
from frantic horses that went dashing rider- 
less over the plains. An officer rode down 
the line and halted near the railroad tracks. 
It was near noon, and an eager man took the 
action as a signal. There was a flash, a re- 
port. The man lay still in the sunbaked dust ; 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 131 

a drunken soldier had taken a life and deso- 
lated a home. Some revolvers gleamed in the 
hands of angry Texans and in another mo- 
ment the soldier lay writhing in the dust. 

Just then an officer waved his sabre and 
the signal guns boomed down the line. Like 
a mighty tidal wave the dense mass of men, 
horses and wagons swayed for an instant and 
then went on with a rush. There were cries 
and shouts — and oaths and blasphemy from 
the drunken soldiers. The noise of rumbling 
wagons and the clatter of horses' hoofs 
sounded like the distant roar of cannonading. 
On surged the swaying line, horsemen dash- 
ing out in front here and there. Every little 
distance was to be found the wreck of a 
wagon that had been crushed in the rush. 
Other wagons were stalled in ravines, horses 
dropped from exhaustion, throwing their 
riders, who lay in gullies or on the rocky 
sides of the mountain ridges, with mangled 
limbs, begging for a drop of water. But the 
mad fever of the rush was on all and little 
heed was paid to suffering. 

Our horses were in fine condition and were 
fleet of foot and ere long we were in the lead, 
in a wild race with the wind. We sighted a 



132 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

stream of clear running water, whose banks 
were fringed with trees, and a valley which 
stretched out for miles to the north. We 
reached a grove and found the cornerstone 
that marked the dividing line of two sections. 
We fired our Winchesters as a signal to the 
others that those claims were taken, and im- 
mediately commenced throwing up earth to 
show that improvements were under way. 
Then, tired out with the excitement of the 
day, we sat down under the trees to rest and 
talk it all over, and, in the late afternoon, fell 
asleep from sheer exhaustion. 

It was dark when Mark suddenly awoke 
and aroused me with the shout : ^ * Get up, for 
your life, get up ! The plains are on fire !' ' 

I was on my feet in an instant. The south- 
ern sky was aglow. Great tongues of flame 
were leaping through the inky blackness of 
the night, with a hiss and roar that sounded 
like the coming of a storm. We hurriedly 
mounted our frantic horses and rode swiftly 
into the northern darkness — whither, we 
knew not; our only thought was to distance 
the fire far enough to give us a chance to 
burn a space about us and thus find safety. 

Suddenly I felt a falling sensation. Then 



'XHIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 133 

tliere were pains in my head and mysterious, 
dreadful aches in my legs. Visions flitted 
before apparently unseeing eyes and at last 
I came to realize that I was lying on a cot in 
a tent. Mark came in and I asked him where 
I was. 

*^ Never mind now,'' he said gently. To- 
morrow came, and the next day, and still an- 
other, but Mark remained silent. Gradually 
my mind became normal and I distinctly re- 
called the last moments of consciousness ; the 
prairie fire, the wild ride to safety. Mark 
then added the closing chapter. My horse 
had plunged into a rocky canon, fully 20 feet 
in depth. His horse had scented the danger 
and had reared, saving him from my fate. 
He back-fired the grass, and, in its light, saw 
me lying at the bottom of the canon. Tender- 
ly he cared for me during the night and in 
the morning got a doctor, who set the broken 
limb, and here I was convalescing. 



XVII. 

TOLD AROUND THE CAMPFIEEr 

* * You knew Cora Belle Fellows, that white 
girl at Cheyenne Agency, South Dakota, who 
married a buck Indian, eh, BillT' 

^*Yep,'' Bill Hawkins answered, ^^and I 
know what the results were, too. 

* ^ About a year after she had left a fashion- 
able seminary in New York state and came 
among the redskins to teach them manners 
and the like, she surprised and shocked every- 
body by announcing her marriage to Chaska, 
a full blood Sioux, twenty-one years of age. 
Then her troubles began. She was frowned 
upon by both whites and Indians. She went 
with Chaska to his tepee and lived upon the 
coarse chuck furnished by Uncle Sam. 

* * Her escapade was commented upon by all 
the newspapers of the country at the time, 
and a museum man of Chicago induced her 
and Chaska to place themselves upon exhibi- 
tion. For two years she was inspected by the 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 135 

public, which in the meantime had made her 
presents until she had a carload of furniture. 

^'Then she concluded to go back to the 
Agency and make a farmer out of Chaska, 
and so with the money earned in the museum, 
she and her Indian lord returned. She pur- 
chased land some miles from the Agency and 
built a house. 

*^The agent and myself rode out there 
about six months after they had gone to 
housekeeping. We were both curious to 
know how they were getting along. 

**It was a sight for your whiskers. Out- 
side sat nearly all her furniture. The covers 
of plush had been ripped off for Indian 
horse trappings, the wood was stained and 
weather cracked. 

^^The house was without doors, worn blan- 
kets being hung instead. The floors were 
cold and bare. In a corner upon an old mat- 
tress lay Cora Belle Fellows or Mrs. Chaska. 
An old squaw sat by her side, crooning some 
lingo over her new born kid. She did not 
want to talk and we went away. Chaska soon 
after left her and took a wife from his own 
tribe, leaving her to live in a tepee about the 
Agency like any other squaw, feeding on 



136 I'HIETY YEAKS ON THE FEONTIEE. 

Uncle Sam's grub. 

*^You might as well have tried to shove 
butter down a wildcat's neck with a hot awl 
as to have tried to talk that gal out of marry- 
ing the buck. ' ' 

^ * Marrying is bad business, anyway, unless 
they are both hooked up right, ' ' observed the 
cook. ' ^ There is old Ben Berkley living over 
on the Cottonwood. He was pretty well 
fixed before he married that widder. She 
was a spiritualist or something of the sort, 
and used to go off in trances and have white 
lights coming around until she scared old Ben 
nearly to death. She was always running 
over the country telling people's future and 
leaving Ben at home to cook. He took to 
drinking and one day got the D. T.'s and 
thought a freight engine was chasing him up 
and down the alleys of the town, and he final- 
ly crawled under a barn to keep out of its 
way, when the boys rescued him. After 
that he would not drink any more, but poured 
the licker in his boots and would get as full 
as a tick by absorption. 

**His wife had brought to the ranch a 
measley water Spaniel, which Ben used to 
amuse himself with by throwing cobs and 



tHlRTY YEARS ON THE I^ROlNtTIER. l37 

sticks into the river and teaching the dog to 
swim in and get them and bring them back to 
him, not thinking of the great blessing it was 
finally to be to him. 

^^Ben had been blasting out a hole for a 
cyclone cellar with sticks of gun-cotton, when 
his wife took it into her head that she wanted 
a mess of fish. 

*^ ^No time to fish,' said Ben. *Take a 
stick of that dynamite and go down to the 
creek where the water is still and blow out a 
mess for yourself.' 

**His wife took the cartridge and lit the 
fuse, then gave the thing a toss into the creek. 
The dog was there and thinking she was play- 
ing with him, swam in and got the cartridge 
and came running up the bank to give it to 
her. Then she started to run over the plowed 
ground, yelling at the top of her voice, * Drap 
it, Tige! Drap it!' There was an explosion 
and a hole in the ground big enough to bury 
a horse. The dog had gone up higher than 
Elijah, while Mrs. Berkley was laying in a 
furrow with one leg injured by the cartridge. 
In a day or two the leg swelled up and old 
Ben sent for the cross-roads doctor, who de- 



138 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

cided that the injured leg would have to conie 
off. 

*^The doctor went to town the next day to 
get some tools, and was so glad over getting 
a job that he filled up on cactus whiskey and 
came back and cut off the wrong leg. The 
sore leg got well afterwards, but, Gee-whiz! 
It tickled old Ben nearly to death, for she has 
to stay at home now." 

*^ Story sounds fishy to me,'* remarked 
Ned Antler. 

** Billy Bolton nearly lost his life for using 
that word, ' ' said Hank Pool. ^ ' You all know 
Billy runs a paper over at Woodward, on the 
Panhandle trail. 

*^ There had been a hold-up in town, and 
Jim Belden was accused of it. After the trial 
before a justice of the peace, Belden was ac- 
quitted. In commenting on the affair in his 
paper the next day, Billy said Belden 's story 
which secured his release sounded fishy. 
Belden was a bad man. He saddled his 
broncho, filled his saddle pockets with grub, 
and his skin full of whiskey and went over 
to Billy's printing office. He hitched the 
broncho in front, and with the paper in one 
hand and his Winchester in the other he went 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 139 

in and asked Billy what he meant by saying 
his story was fishy. Billy was taken by sur- 
prise, for he saw that Belden meant to kill 
him, as he was all ready to hit the trail 

** * Fishy,' says Billy. *Aha, fishy, fi^shy. 
Why that's a compliment, my dear boy. Saint 
Peter used to fish and said so many good 
things that people used to call his sayings 
fishy. It was a favorite expression with 
Aristotle and Socrates, when they addressed 
Napoleon the Great, to say, *I hope your 
royal majesty will speak some imperial fishy 
things today. ' It is — ah, ahah, sort of an in- 
ternational e pluribus unum expression, a 
general sort of a non compos mentis, as it 
were, you understand.' 

*^ 'Oh, well, if that's all,' said Belden, 4t's 
all right, but I wouldn't use the word often 
if I were you, for some of the boys might 
not be as well posted as I am. Much obliged, 
Billy, I was just passing and thought I 
would subscribe for the paper for a year. 
Here is $2.00. Mail it to me at Lampassas." 

'' Bolton got off light," said Tom Tyler. 
**Over at Las Vegas two years ago a sheep 
man called *Doc' Kinnie a liar and before the 
fellow could think twice Doc had his ear sliced 



140 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

off, and he went around afterwards using it 
for a beer check. He would call up the house 
and pay for the drinks with the sheepman's 
ear; he always redeemed it, though, for fear 
the owner would buy it back. ' ' ^ * Cut it out, 
boys, cut it out, get to roost in your blan- 
kets,'' said the boss. *'We hit the trail at 5 
'clock in the morning and make the drive to 
Cimarron by noon. ' ' 

An hour later, the fire had smouldered to 
embers, the stars twinkled in the great dark 
blue dome of the sky, a soft south breeze 
fanned the Oklahoma plains and all was 
silent, save the tramp of horses ' hoofs as the 
outriders circled the herd of bedded cattle. 



XVIII. 

THE LONE GRAVE ON THE MESA. 

High upon the mesa northwest of Colorado 
City, Colo., and near the old cemetery used 
by the pioneers of the early sixties, there is 
a lonely grave, around which clings a romance 
of the early days, which is recalled by the 
phenomena which many persons say they 
have witnessed when passing at night. 

As the story goes, Marie Tinville, the beau- 
tiful daughter of Victor Tinville lived with 
her parents in a cabin near Colorado Citj^, in 
1863. About that time Leon Murat, a dash- 
ing young fellow of about 20 years came out 
from St. Louis and found employment on her 
father's ranch. It was a case of love at first 
sight, intensified by isolated conditions and 
an almost constant companionship. 

The cabin stood near the now famous Gar- 
den of the Gods, and many were the evenings 
the young people wandered among the tower- 
ing rocks in the wondrous bright moonlight 



142 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

of that region, and talked of love, while the 
shadows of Pikers Peak shrouded the dreamy 
valley. 

Love's young dream was rudely awakened 
one day in the autumn of 1864, by the call to 
arms to join Colonel Chivington in his cam- 
paign against the hostile Cheyenne and 
Arapahoe Indians, who were then murdering 
the settlers of Colorado. 

Men were needed, and Leon was brave. He 
kissed his sweetheart good-bye and rode 
away with that avenging column of horsemen 
who fought the battle of Sand Creek in Colo- 
rado, November 29, 1864. 

Murat 's command did nearly three months ' 
campaigning over the dry, heated plains be- 
fore any effective work was accomplished. 

Early in November a mounted column of 
650 Colorado volunteers of Colonel Shoup's 
Third Regiment, 175 of the First Regiment 
and a few mounted Mexicans, formed the 
fighting force under Colonel Chivington. A 
large band of Indians was located on the 
banks of Sand Creek, about forty miles north 
of where Ft. Lyons now stands and near the 
village of Kit Carson. 

Bent's Fort, a rude frontier structure of 



THIRTY YEAES ON THE FRONTIER. 143 

palisades, stood some miles below Ft. Lyons. 
It was to this point that Colonel Chivington 
led his men when he learned that Black Ket- 
tle and White Antelope with some three 
thousand braves, were encamped upon the 
banks of Sand Creek. 

The column made prisoners of all whom 
they met, lest word should reach the Indians 
that they were pushing forward to the attack. 
At Bent's Fort a halt was made to rest riders 
and horses. On the night of the 28th the col- 
umn headed for the encampment on Sand 
Creek, taking as a guide, a half breed son of 
Colonel Bent, and carrying in their rear a 
small brass cannon and ammunition wagon. 

The night was cold and a bleak wind blew 
from the north. With jingle of spur and 
clank of sabre the column rode fours abreast 
through the darkness. The Indian guide led 
them through a shallow lake in the hope that 
the ammunition might become wet. When 
about half way through the lake Murat's 
horse floundered and wet him completely in 
the icy waters. The column rode on while 
Anthony Bott remained to assist him. After 
dividing his own dry clothing with Murat the 
two started to find the trail of the flying col- 



144 THIETY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

umn in the darkness. They were favored 
both by their knowledge of the plains and the 
instinct of their horses, but for five hours 
they were alone in the darkness of a hostile 
country. 

They came up with their command in the 
grey dawn of the morning as they were form- 
ing for battle behind a ridge that overlooked 
the Indian camp. Here Colonel Chivington 
divided his men, sending a column of twos in 
opposite directions so as to surround the 
camp. The Indians were in their tepees when 
the cannon sent a crash of iron into their 
midst. The battle was on. Chief White An- 
telope came rushing from his tepee brandish- 
ing a rifle, urging on his followers. The en- 
circling horsemen closing in on them emptied 
their rifles and revolvers into the confused 
mass of Indians. 

Indian depredations had been so numerous 
in Colorado and the atrocities so cruel, that 
the men, many of whom had been victims of 
Indian raids and had lost their all, their fam- 
ilies or friends being butchered, gave no 
quarter, and when the battle ended they felt 
even more justified when there was found 
within the tepees a number of scalps recently 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 145 

torn from the heads of white women and 
children. Nearly 1,000 Indians were killed 
when the firing ceased, and a crimson tide 
ebbed into the creek and reddened its waters 
with blood. 

A squaw and a boy were found hiding in 
the tall grass. Murat shot the squaw and 
captured the boy. Bott bought the young In- 
dian, intending to bring him up in civiliza- 
tion. The boy was standing by his side when, 
an hour later a pistol shot rang out from a 
group of men some yards away and the 
young Indian fell dead. Bott was angered, 
and drawing his own revolver, offered one 
hundred dollars to anyone who would point 
out the man who fired the shot. No one 
would tell. 

Murat with a companion was trying to cap- 
ture some of the Indians' horses far out on 
the plain, when one of Black Kettle's fleeing 
Indians rose from behind a hillock and shot 
him dead. White Antelope was killed, while 
a large number of Indians under Black Ket- 
tle escaped by scattering like quail over the 
plain and hiding in the grass. 

While the battle was raging the families of 
many of the soldiers from Colorado City 



146 THIRTY YEAES ON THE FKONTIEB. 

had gathered in the Anway Fort at that 
place, and a telepathic wave of horror spread 
over all. Many were praying and weeping, 
and all seemed to feel that a dreadful thing 
was being enacted in which their loved ones 
were taking part. 

When the news of the battle reached the 
fort and the death of young Murat was an- 
nounced, Marie Tinville fell in a swoon, af- 
ter which her mind was a blank. From that 
time on her decline was rapid and in a few 
months she was laid in the lonely grave upon 
the mesa. 

After that stories were told of strange 
things. A white light was seen about the 
grave, which vanished on close approach. 
Once old Ben Jordan an antelope hunter, 
came to town at night, his long hair fairly on 
end, saying that a white light had risen in 
front of him near the grave, out of which 
protruded a naked arm. The incredulous 
asked him what he had been drinking, but he 
stuck to the story as long as he lived. 

George Birdsall, a young man of Colorado 
City, had heard the story and thought it all a 
joke. He recently went out one night to in- 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 147 

vestigate. He saw no white light, but felt 
a peculiar rush of cold air and a touch upon 
the cheek as soft as if some one had gently 
kissed him. 



XIX. 

UNDER THE BLACK FLAG. 

As the sun went down below the rolling 
glassy waters of the gulf of Mexico, I sat on 
the hatchway steps of the little steamer 
Dauntless, fully realizing for the first time 
that perhaps before morning I would be 
swinging to the yard-arm of a Spanish man- 
of-war. 

I was sick, anyway, and the abominable 
mixture of whiskey and garlic which Mark 
Witherspoon had given me as a preventive 
against yellow fever, had made the contem- 
plation worse. 

The Dauntless was loaded with arms and 
munitions of war for the Cuban Insurgents 
and if the Spaniards caught us we would 
doubtless share the fate of the crew of the 
Virginius at Santiago de Cuba in 1873. 

I had credentials as a newspaper corre- 
spondent, but Mark Witherspoon and I had 
duly enlisted at Tampa, Florida, in the cause 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 149 

of Cuban liberty, and we were assigned to the 
third division of Garcia 's army under com- 
mand of General Euloff. 

Our little vessel hugged the Florida Keys 
for more than a week. Meantime we were re- 
inforced by small parties of twos and threes, 
who came in open boats by night. The stores 
of rifles, ammunition and dynamite came by 
small sailing craft. We now numbered thirty- 
seven men. Eight of us were Americans, two 
were Germans and the others were Cubans 
from Tampa and Key West. 

On the night we were ready to start the dis- 
tinguishing lights of a revenue cutter were 
seen, so we lay close in a little cove and 
banked the fires in our furnace until four 
o'clock the next afternoon, when we slipped 
out and put for the high seas, headed straight 
for the coast of Cuba. When night fairly set 
in, there came small squalls and a drizzling 
rain. We had no signal lights out and every 
sound was muffled, even the funnel was so 
protected that not a spark could escape. All 
night long everybody was most keenly alert, 
and it was towards daylight that the irregu- 
lar mountain lines of Cuba could be dis- 
cerned, standing in shadowy relief against a 



150 THIRTY YEARS OIT THE FROlTTIER, 

darkened sky. On entering a little land- 
locked harbor we signaled with flash lanterns 
and were soon answered from the shore. 
Nearly a hundred insurgents met us, and the 
work of unloading quickly began. During 
the morning we were reinforced by nearly a 
hundred more Cubans who brought ponies 
and pack mules. As soon as we were unload- 
ed our vessel hoisted the Danish flag and 
with all possible speed put out for the high 
seas. Her hull was well down on the horizon 
when we took up our march inland. Our 
route lay over tortuous mountain trails over 
which our ponies climbed with the agility of 
goats. The trail was often dangerous in the 
extreme, for the slip of a pony's hoof would 
have sent both horse and rider hundreds of 
feet below. We had taken trails unknown 
to the Spanish soldiery. 

"When about fifty miles in the interior, we 
reached a plateau and here found encamped 
some eight hundred men under General Eu- 
loff . From the very first I had but little con- 
fidence in him. He was a Polish Jew, well 
educated in military tactics, but unfitted to 
conduct a guerrilla warfare with men like us 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 151 

who were virtually fighting Tinder the black 
flag. 

Subsequent events proved this, for at the 
fight of Santo Esperitu we left our impro- 
vised hospital unguarded, and Captain San- 
doval cut to our rear and captured it and af- 
ter destroying much of our valuable stores, 
put every sick man to death. 

Our rendezvous lay in the province of 
Puerto Principe and our line of action west- 
ward. After the fight at Santo Esperitu we 
never massed in action, but divided into com- 
panies of about one hundred, free to run or 
fight as our commander ordered. 

Our detachment captured Captain Sando- 
val and a party of his men, and in view of his 
inhuman treatment of our prisoners, he was 
promptly shot. Sandoval went to his death 
as all other cowardly butchers do, trembling 
like a leaf in the wind. 

"We were ordered by Eulof f to burn all azu- 
caderos (sugar mills) and to blow up with dy- 
namite all railroad culverts and bridges and 
to destroy all telegraph lines. Our division 
frequently made rapid raids, always gaining 
ground westward. The division to which we 
were attached raided the town of San Lazaro 



152 THIETY YEARS OK THE FRONTIER. 

which was defended by a small body of Span- 
iards. We routed them and captured some 
two hundred Mauser rifles and a large quan- 
tity of ammunition and other military stores. 
Our commander then ordered the execution 
of the alcalde (mayor) for having betrayed a 
number of insurgent sympathizers, causing 
them to be shot, and their families to be 
driven through the streets, beaten with sticks. 

Early in November we were encamped 
near Nuevitas where we had lain inactive for 
several days. One afternoon scouts had re- 
ported an advancing column and we had 
chosen for our ambuscade the ruins of a stone 
building, now overgrown with vines and near- 
ly hidden from view by a cactus thicket. 

There was a hushed stillness in the dark 
forest that lay beyond the long yellow road, 
and in the cane fields that stretched away for 
leagues to our right. To the left the San de 
Cubitas mountains, with their covering of 
dense tropical vegetation, rose dark and si- 
lent. A lookout had climbed a tall cebra tree 
and was watching with a field glass. He sud- 
denly gave the signal. Then the men were 
told in whispers each to select a man and to 
fire at a given order. The Cuban sun blazed 



ODHIRT^ YEARS ON CtHE FRONTIER. 153 

hotly down that day. The air was close and 
stifling in our position behind the cactus 
thicket and our hearts beat quick and fast in 
those moments of waiting. There was the 
low rumble of horses hoofs, a cloud of yellow 
dust arose from down the road, and soon the 
Spanish column was almost abreast the 150 
rifles that pointed from behind the stone 
wall. I peered over the sights of my Win- 
chester and drew a bead on the breast of a 
young officer. He was chatting gaily with a 
companion and as he turned his face revealed 
a handsome countenance. It was a boyish 
face with the dawn of manhood just settling 
upon the brow. Thoughts crowded each other 
in my mind just then: Perhaps the young 
man was a conscript, not here by his own 
choice to imperil his young life, and I, whom 
he had never wronged, an unsuspected foe, 
safely hid in the cactus thicket behind the 
stone wall, about to send his soul into eter- 
nity. I lowered my aim from his breast to 
his horse just behind the shoulder. The 
order came to fire. The trigger that would 
have pulled like a ton weight a second before 
pulled easily now. And so all through those 
dreadful volleys that we poured into the 



154 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

struggling ranks. For firing into a mass of 
men is a different thing from that of firing 
upon one man singly. When the smoke of 
battle cleared away more than forty of the 
routed Spanish column lay dead or wounded 
in the road. I went to the place where the 
young trooper ^s horse had fallen and there 
lay the young officer pinioned underneath 
with a broken leg. I felt that I wanted to 
help him. I knew from the look on his manly 
face that in private life he would have been 
my friend, but to show a kindly feeling at 
that time would have made me a suspect 
among my comrades in arms. Their machetes 
flashed in the sunlight and their strokes fall- 
ing swift and fast reddened the soil of Puerto 
Principe. Mark and I stood silent, helpless 
spectators of the horrors of war and revenge, 
wreaked by men, who in the remembrance of 
wrongs and outrage, were lost to any feeling 
of common humanity. There was only one 
act of kindness which I dared perform. In 
the pocket of his blood-stained blouse I found 
a letter. It was from his mother in Seville, 
and bore a mother's love and sister's prayer 
for his safe return. When I afterwards 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 155 

landed at Galveston, I sent it to his home, with 
an account of how he died upon the battlefield. 
The blazing sun was yet high when we were 
in our saddles and moving away. I saw a 
vulture circling above the battlefield, one, 
two, then a dozen, then a score. These black- 
winged scavengers had scented death, and 
there let contemplation end. Night comes 
suddenly in the tropics, when the sun dips be- 
yond the sea, but here and there in the valley 
were lights, lantern like at first, spreading 
soon like a long prairie fire. They were in 
the cane fields which our men were firing, 
and as the flames swept on, the bursting 
stalks sounded like a battle with light re- 
volvers. It lit the night, and its glare and 
gloom added mystery to the dark forest be- 
yond the road. Morning came and we were 
safely encamped amid the hills. The birds 
sang merrily and the sun dried the dew upon 
the tall, rank grass, and when it came roll 
call, two names were stricken off. They had 
reported the day before to the Great Com- 
mander of the great beyond. 



XX. 



IN CUBAN JUNGLES. 



Spies brought news of an encampment of 
Spanish infantry a day's march ahead. All 
was hustle in the Cuban insurgent camp. 
Twenty-eight Texans who had recently 
joined our command were allowed the privi- 
lege of leading our column to the attack. That 
day we followed circuitous mountain trails 
and encamped at night in the heart of a dense 
forest through whose trailing vines we made 
our way along the bridle paths. By 4 o'clock 
in the morning we were again in the saddle. 
There was no blare of trumpet or beat of 
drums to announce our coming as our column 
of horsemen stole from out the silent forest 
and wound along the road like a great creep- 
ing serpent to strike death. 

The Spanish camp was beyond a small 
stream through which we were to charge. 
Halting a mile beyond their picket lines, sad- 
dle girths were tightened, weapons were 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 157 

looked to, and we formed in a column of 
fours. Americans to the front, and ready for 
the charge. Ten stalwart Cubans were se- 
lected to form the skirmish line two hundred 
yards in advance and engage the enemy when 
they reached the banks of the stream. The 
column was then to charge at a gallop and 
use the revolver and machete. 

The first rays of the sun were gilding the 
mountain crests and awakening the flamin- 
goes around the lagoons when a Spanish 
sentry's rifle told the moment of action had 
come. 

On pressed our column at double quick, 
while the increased firing ahead warned us 
that the Spanish camp was aroused. There 
was the heavy rattle of Mauser rifles, fol- 
lowed by the sharper report of Winchesters 
as our advance guard reached the stream and 
drew aside to let our column pass. 

The little river flowed from the mountains 
and plunged over rock and cliff in wild tu- 
mult. Below the ford which we were crossing 
there were falls and as the Spaniards fired a 
volley that struck our column midway in the 
stream, they emptied many saddles, while 



158 THIKTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

wounded men were carried down to watery- 
graves. 

The Spaniards threw a double cordon of 
infantry at bayonet charge against our cav- 
alry, but the Texans' revolvers opened a gap 
and the column rode through the demoralized 
camp, doing its fearful work. On the col- 
unm plunged, fire leaping from the deadly 
revolvers on either side. When beyond the 
Spanish camp, the bugle sounded wheel, and 
back we rode among the panic stricken sol- 
diers, dealing death until they broke in con- 
fusion, and gained the cover of the forest. We 
halted long enough to gather up our wound- 
ed and burn the supply train. An hour later 
and we were in full retreat to our rendezvous 
in the San de Cubitas mountains. One even- 
ing Mark and I started for the vicinity of an 
azucadero, where we knew there was a patch 
of sweet potatoes. The night was dark, damp 
and chilly, and the road lay through a clear- 
ing of tall palms whose white trunks stood 
like ghostly sentinels. The silence was un- 
broken save by the sound of horses' hoofs, 
the croaking of frogs and the distant baying 
of dogs about some negro casa. We did not 
suppose there was a Spaniard within fifty 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 159 

miles of us, and as we rode our ponies silently 
along a horseman suddenly appeared in front 
of us, and in clear Castilian tones shouted: 
* ^ Quien vive ! ' ' * * Cuba Libre ! ' ' cried Mark, 
drawing his machete and spurring his horse 
forward. At the same instant I discharged 
my revolver full in the sentinel's face. We 
wheeled our horses and rode quickly into the 
clearing, knowing better than to retreat by 
the road we came. It was well we did not, for 
soon a body of Spanish cavalry came tearing 
down the road, firing a volley ahead at ran- 
dom. We rode on through the clearing, being 
now cut off from our command. At length 
we came to a creek whose banks were steep 
and fringed on either side by trees, from 
whose branches hung a network of tangled 
vines and creepers. The water flowed slug- 
gishly, as most streams in Cuba do. We de- 
termined to cross the creek at once, knowing 
that with the first streak of dawn we would 
be tracked, for we had left an easy trail in 
the soft soil. We used our machetes with 
great difficulty to cut a path through the 
vines, and when we reached the water's edge 
swam our ponies across and cut our way 
through on the opposite bank where we lay 



160 THIKTY YEABS ON THE FEONTIER. 

down to await developments of the morning. 
Both of us must have fallen asleep, for we 
were startled by a loud grito alto from the 
other side of the creek. Peering through the 
bushes we saw a Spanish trooper gesticulat- 
ing to a party of cavalry in the rear. In an- 
other second there was the simultaneous re- 
port of our two Winchesters and the trooper 
rolled from his horse. We hurriedly mounted 
our ponies amid the fusillade of bullets from 
the approaching squad of cavalry, and spur- 
ring our horses toward a cane field, we were 
soon hidden. A little later we abandoned our 
horses and started them off in another direc- 
tion with a lashing, thinking thereby to gain 
time and elude our pursuers. Then we start- 
ed for the azucadero. It was our first inten- 
tion to fire it, thinking its flames would at- 
tract the attention of our command and bring 
us relief. But as we came out of the cane 
field we saw a body of troopers crossing a 
bridge which spanned the creek. We did not 
think they saw us, and in our haste to find a 
hiding place we ran around the building to a 
well which supplied the boilers. Leaping on 
a platform we found a lot of empty sugar 
hogsheads standing on end near a lot of filled 



THIETY YEAES ON THE FRONTIEK. 161 

ones. We quickly rolled an empty beside 
them and turned the open end down, getting 
under it. The troopers had seen us and 
tracked us straight to the well. They sup- 
posed we had descended by means of the 
pump pipe and hidden our bodies in the wa- 
ter, for they began hurling stones in the 
water and with a mixture of Spanish oaths 
called us ^^Perro Americano '^ (dog Ameri- 
can). Satisfied with their work of extermin- 
ating us in the well, they rode away. 

Meanwhile we were couched in close quar- 
ters, with our revolvers tightly clenched, de- 
termined to sell out as dearly as possible. 
When they had gone, Mark whispered, ^'I 
am badly shot,'' indicating the spot by plac- 
ing his hand upon his abdomen. The morn- 
ing wore away and our situation was becom- 
ing unbearable. We were cramped and al- 
most suffocated. Mark had swooned away 
twice in the agony of pain. Fortunately we 
had filled our canteens from the brackish 
waters of the creek, which alleviated our suf- 
ferings some. Yet it was past noon before 
we ventured out. I helped Mark inside the 
azucadero, where he laid down upon a pile 
of cane refuse, while I examined his wound. 



162 THIRTY YEAKS ON THE FRONTIER. 

One look was enough. The contents of the 
abdomen were oozing out through the wound, 
and I knew that was a fatal sign. I carried a 
pocket case containing a few medicines for 
an emergency, among which was some mor- 
phine. I gave him an eighth grain tablet 
which relieved him some, but at times his pain 
grew so great that he begged me to shoot him. 
We could hear distant firing during the 
afternoon, but the sounds were growing faint- 
er and we knew our command was retreating. 
"When night came on I gave Mark another 
tablet of morphine and lay down for some 
rest. The dreadful chill that always follows 
a gunshot wound had set in, but I had no 
blankets or other coverings with which to les- 
sen his sufferings. Thoroughly exhausted 
myself, I soon fell asleep, and when I awoke 
late in the night, I was alone with the dead. 
For me to bury him was impossible, and I 
could not think of leaving him there a prey 
to the vultures. So I did what I should have 
wanted him to do for me had our places been 
reversed. Sorrowfully I left him alone in the 
now burning azucadero and while the flames 
of his funeral pyre were lighting the night, I 
started for the sea. 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 163 

That day I fell in with a party of insur- 
gents who were on their way to the coast to 
meet another filibustering vessel. As mala- 
ria and the effects of climate were telling 
heavily upon me, they kindly gave me aid in 
boarding the craft, by which I afterwards 
landed at the docks at New Orleans, feeling 
that I had done my share in the cause of Cu- 
ban liberty. 



XXI. 

EMULOUS OF WASHINGTON. 

**I don't know that I can tell you fellows 
about the first dollar I ever earned, ' ' said W. 
P. Epperson, the pioneer editor of the Colo- 
rado City , * ^but I do know the 

first and last lie I ever told." 

* * You ought to remember, seeing that it has 
not been over twenty minutes,'' said George 
Geiger. 

** Twenty minutes be smashed!" yelled 
Epperson, reaching for his gun, *4t's been 
twenty years this summer. My first lie was 
a trivial one about fishing, and the last hap- 
pened in this way. 

^^ Twenty years, did you say?" interrupted 
the hired man with an incredulous look. 

*^ That's what I mean," and the veteran 
editor took another chew of Battle Ax, while 
a halo of white settled down about his head. 

**In the autumn of 1885," he continued, ^^I 
stepped off a Union Pacific train at Silver 



THIRTY YEAES ON THE FEONTIER. 165 

Creek, Nebraska, and after a good supper I 
determined to drive across the country to Os- 
ceola, a distance of thirty miles. The driver 
of the livery rig was about the most hand- 
somely attired imitation of a cow boy I had 
ever seen. He wore a new suit of corduroy 
with a broad sombrero and high-heeled boots 
with ornamented red tops, also a bright blue 
shirt and a rattlesnake skin necktie. I had 
him sized up for a green country boy from 
Indiana or Illinois who had seen but little of 
frontier life, and he confirmed my suspicions 
a little later as we were crossing the Platte 
Eiver bridge by saying, ^I suppose if you 
knew what my business had been you would 
hesitate to ride with me alone on the plains 
at night. * 

^^It was getting dark and we were crossing 
a wide stretch of the then desolate plain that 
lay between the Platte River and Osceola. I 
was enjoying a cigar and felt at peace with 
all the world, when a devlish thought struck 
me, and I asked, 'Wliat has been your busi- 
ness 1 ' 

^^ *Well, sir,' he replied, *I have been a 
cow boy. ' 

* ^ * The deuce you have, ' said I, ^ Shake, old 



166 THIRTY YEARS OK THE FRONTIER. 

man, you are a fellow after my own heart, 
and since you have been so kind to tell me 
your business, I will let you know who I am, 
I, sir, am Doc Middleton. * 

*^The fellow almost fell from his seat in 
surprise. Doc Middleton was the notorious 
outlaw whose depredations had become so 
terrorizing to the settlers of Nebraska that 
the State had offered a reward of $5,000 for 
his capture, dead or alive. I enjoyed the joke 
I was playing all the more when I saw the 
effect of my speech. 

** * Just now,' I continued, *I am trying to 
get away from a sheriff's posse; that is why 
I am making the cut across the country. 
They may overtake us, and if they do, there 
will be some heavy shooting.' 

*^ *With this I drew a big Colt revolver 
from my overcoat pocket and I said I had two 
more like it in my valise. I also told him if 
they overtook us he must get down by the 
dashboard and drive for dear life, that he 
might get shot in the back, but that would be 
cow boy's luck. 

By this time he was nervous and began 
looking backwards as he whipped the ponies 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 167 

up at a lively gait. I did not pretend to no- 
tic it and so kept up my lying. 

^ ^ ^ The first man I ever killed, ' I told him, 
*was a one-eyed man in Utah, who called me 
a liar, and I threw his body over a cliff, and 
my conscience hurt me for full half an hour 
afterwards. After that I soon got so I loved 
to blow a man's head off just to see his brains 

fly.' 

* * It had grown quite dark, and having noth- 
ing better to do, I told him all the bloody 
stories I could think of and claimed them as 
my own experience until I became tired of 
the foolishness and lapsed into silence. We 
had made about half our journey and were 
passing a farm house set in a dense grove of 
trees. There were lights in the house and 
the young man broke the silence by asking, 
^Please, dear Mister Doc Middleton, may I 
go in and get a drink of water? I think I 
have got a fever in my throat. ' 

^^ ^Certainly, my boy, certainly,' I replied 
taking the lines. He slid off the rig and ran 
to the house, while I sat there like a fool hold- 
ing the horses. About twenty minutes passed 
and he did not return. Then I noticed the 
lights in the house had been extinguished. I 



168 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FROKTIER. 

called loudly for the young man to return, 
and when it flashed over my mind that to him 
I was the outlaw Doc Middleton, and he might 
warn the farmer of my presence, who might 
even then be waiting to get a shot at me, I 
yelled again for him in fear, louder than be- 
fore, but there was no response. The more I 
thought of my predicament, the more ner- 
vous I became, until the cold sweat stood out 
like beads on my face. 

*^I could stand it no longer, and seizing the 
whip, I cut the horses a lash and crouched 
down by the dashboard just as I had been in- 
structing the young man to do. In the sud- 
den dash, the horses broke one of the buggy 
springs, and I wandered on the plains until 
morning, for I had missed the Osceola road. 
It cost me $2 to have the spring mended and 
$5 to send a man back to Silver Creek with 
the rig, to say nothing of being scared within 
an inch of my life. ' ' 



XXII. 



ON THE ROUND UP. 



The round-up of today differs in no essen- 
tial particular from that of former years, ex- 
cepting in the number of cattle rounded up 
and the number of men and horses required 
in its working. 

In 1900 I spent some months on a ranch in 
northern Colorado, where there are still 
large bunches of cattle. 

For some days prior to the start the fore- 
man had been busy preparing the wagon, 
rounding up saddle horses, hiring men and 
making final arrangements for the start. 

When the day arrived everything was in a 
state of activity and as evening approached 
the corral was filled with horses. Each *^ wad- 
die ^ ' was tolled off his string of mounts. Ten 
to each man, and after the summer on rich 
buffalo grass every horse was in a state that 
boded no good for the unaccustomed rider. 

That night we ate our suppers at the chuck 



170 THIRTY YEAES ON THE FRONTIER. 

wagon at the round-up camp, after which the 
boys sat around a chip fire, telling stories 
and smoking. 

The cowboy story differs from any I have 
ever heard, both in extravagance of statement 
and manner of telling. They relate to any- 
thing and everything that has ever come un- 
der his acute observation. 

**I always had an especial desire to make 
governors my associates,'' said *' Beaut'' 
Bowers, **so with a view to a pleasant ac- 
quaintance I once called upon Governor 
Waite, presenting the compliments of Gover- 
nor Eentf row of Oklahoma and several other 
governors, none of whom had sent any com- 
pliments, but then they are so cheap I thought 
I could give him a few without their missing 
them. 

*'I had heard that he wanted to ride to his 
bridle bits in blood and I wanted to get into 
the swim, although I would rather it was 
beer. 

^*It was the governor's day to be out of 
sorts, and he did not seem inclined to talk. I 
wanted to talk and resolved to break the ice 
of his reserve in some manner. So when he 
asked how the people of Oklahoma stood the 



THIKTY YEARS ON THE FKONTlER. 171 

panic, I told Mm we had not felt it in the 
least. He seemed surprised at this and asked, 
' < Why not I ' ' I replied we were all too poor 
to own anything and had got beyond expect- 
ing it. ^ ^ Well, poor people have to live ; how 
do they manage for some money T* I told 
him when silver was demonetized we took to 
catching Keeley graduates and scraping the 
chloride of gold off them with a case-knife 
and had done fairly well. 

^ ^ The old man stared at me and asked me if 
I had wheels in my head too. Everybody had 
been saying the old governor had wheels in 
his head until I believe he was afraid to pick 
his ears lest a cog clip the end of his finger 
off. 

^^I had recently been on Zack MulhalPs 
ranch in Oklahoma, where the Keverend Bu- 
chanan used to come and talk Populism to the 
boys until I got tired of it one night and stole 
his false teeth where he put them to soak in 
a tin cup. There was a lot of socialism too, 
in his talk that didn^t go down, for on that 
ranch the first fellow up of a morning got the 
best socks, and that made me fall out with 
the idea of community of interests. But to 
humor the governor I spoke of the wide- 



172 THIKTY YEAES ON THE FRONTIER. 

spreading revolutionary sentiment in Texas 
and Oklahoma and hinted that they had their 
eyes turned eagerly on his movements, as it 
was their hope he might devise some way to 
lead the country out of the silver difficulty. 
He then showed me a letter from President 
Diaz, of Mexico. It suggested another pan- 
American congress in the interests of silver. 
^^It's no use, though,'' he said, ^'the last as- 
sembly of the kind amounted to nothing. 
Eastern influences would soon retard any 
movement of the sort. ' 

^* *If we are to continually be the back 
dooryard of the east,' I replied, *the sooner 
we secede from it the better. ' 

^ ' Here was a long pause, the old man look- 
ing at me intently to see if the wheels in my 
head were working, and I tried at the same 
time to discover if the machinery in his was 
all right. 

^ ' Seeing the point of vantage I continued : 
'Divide the country from the Mississippi 
River, establish a new republic with our own 
capital, make Galveston our New York, with a 
national railroad to that point ; coin our gold 
and silver, make banks a public trust, with 
any betrayal of it punishable as high treason. 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 173 

If we are going into revolution we must have 
something like this for our object, otherwise 
we will only terminate in anarchy. As gover- 
nor of Colorado call for a delegation of repre- 
sentative citizens from other states to meet 
here in convention and start the ball rolling. * 

**I delivered this sentiment in round, 
strong terms, while the governor listened, ap- 
parently pleased. 

* * You will see all you want to of revolution 
before two years, ^ he quietly said, *it is com- 
ing sure as fate and were I your age I would 
win fame and fortune by — ^ 

'^At this moment an unfortunate affair 
happened. An Indian had given me a white 
bulldog. That dog had more sense than half 
the people and I loved him like a brother. One 
day the dog got too close to the heels of a 
heifer and she kicked one eye out. He felt 
so bad over it that I wrote to an eye doctor 
to send me a glass eye for my dog. He wrote 
back that he did not deal in dogs' eyes, but 
sent me a bright blue human eye. One of the 
boys and I managed to fix it in and the dog 
was very proud of it, only it fit so tight he 
could not wink. He would lay for hours 
asleep with the glass eye staring with 



174 THIKTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

an expression of strangled innocence 
confronting the murderer. Where I went 
that dog went also, and all through the 
conversation with Governor Waite my dog 
lay on the floor asleep, but that glass eye kept 
staring at the governor's dog until he took 
it for an insult and came over to our part of 
the room for a scrap. 

**In the melee of separating the dogs the 
governor jabbed his thumb in that glass eye 
and nearly cut it off. That made him so mad 
he would not talk any more and I may have to 
wander on through eternity guessing what he 
would have said. My dog felt so humiliated 
that he went home by the back alleys.'' 

Other stories followed, relating to horses 
and daring deeds of their riders. It seemed 
like we had only slept a few moments when 
we were awakened by the call of the boss, 
**roll out," **roll out." In a short time ev- 
ery man of the twenty-five was on his feet, 
rolling up his bed and throwing it in a pile 
ready to be loaded on the wagon. All gladly 
answered to the call, ** Chuck's ready!" 

Each man took a plate and tin cup, knife, 
fork and spoon, and went to the Dutch ovens, 
where everything was cooked and helped him- 



THIRTY YEAES ON THE FRONTIER. 175 

self. The breakfast consisted of bacon, pota- 
toes, warm bread and black coffee. Seated 
on the ground Turk fashion, with plate on 
knees and cup by side, we ate our hearty 
meal. 

After breakfast the bed wagon was loaded 
with its freight. The chuck wagon which was 
driven by the cook and drawn by six horses, 
pulled out for the next camp, followed by the 
wrangler with the bunch of unused saddle 
horses. Orders were given to the riders, the 
place of the next camp appointed. The range 
was divided into circles, beginning at the old 
camp and ending at the new. Eiding the out- 
side is the hardest of all. The boys took turns 
at this as each must use his best horse, start 
first and get in last. It is his business to 
round up all the cattle on the limits of the 
range and throw them toward the center, 
where they will be taken up by the next man 
and so on until the whole is bunched together 
and driven to camp. Here they were held in 
a bunch until the foreman with his chosen rid- 
ing men and trained cut horses went into the 
bunch and cut out the beef cattle and calves 
that had escaped branding and ear marking. 

The beef cattle were then cut into a bunch 



176 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

by themselves and held by some of the men. 
After the beeves were out the calves were 
branded. The calves were roped from horse- 
back, generally by both hind feet, then an- 
other rope was thrown over the head and the 
calf stretched out. Thus held by two horses 
the hot branding iron was applied. This re- 
quired only a moment and ^* doggy'' was on 
his feet making for the main bunch. So the 
work proceeded until the whole bunch had 
been worked. 

The beef cattle were driven along with the 
wagons and night herded until five train 
loads had been gathered. 

The unused saddle horses were herded and 
kept with the camp. They were brought to 
the wagons each morning by the wrangler. 
For a corral to catch the horses in, two long 
ropes were stretched out in the form of a tri- 
angle, using the wagon as one side, into which 
the bunch was driven. Each man then roped 
his horse for the day. A different horse is 
used each day, so that one horse is used only 
once in about eight or ten days, according to 
the number of horses a man has on his string. 

I rode the outside one day with ** Beaut" 
Bowers. We chose our stoutest horses, 



a* 



o 

H 

p 

o 

P 

n> 

l-H 

00 




THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 177 

cinched on our Imlls and rode in a steady 
lope from 5 o'clock in the morning until 2 
o'clock in the afternoon. 

When a bunch of cattle was found we start- 
ed them in toward the center on a full run. 
We took our slickers from behind our sad- 
dles and waved the cattle into a run, which 
carried them within the next rider's circle. 

The cowboys are master hands at yelling, 
and cattle run at sight of a man on horseback 
much faster when he begins to yell. 

Two or more men went on watch at sun- 
down to keep the cattle from straying. Later 
in the evening the cattle become quiet and bed 
down. If the night is still and nothing hap- 
pens to disturb them, they will remain quiet 
all night. The stampede is one of the worst 
things that can happen, even now in these 
days of wire fences. 

If the cattle are only a little scared they 
may be easily quieted, though sometimes they 
break away and the men on guard have to 
ride at break-neck speed through the night, 
over ground that is dangerous even in the day 
time. More than one fellow has met with a 
broken limb or ribs from such a mad ride. 

When the cattle break away in this manner 



178 THIRTY YEARS ON" THE FRONTIER. 

the men ride alongside of the bunch and 
gradually work up the leaders and sometimes 
even throw their horses over against them in 
an attempt to get them to *' milling '' — that is, 
get them to running in a circle. Once this is 
accomplished, the rest is more easy. The 
bunch is kept milling until exhausted, when 
they gradually slow down, and at last, 
after perhaps hours of hard riding, quiet 
down. Through the rest of the night they 
need close watching; they are nervous and 
may break away again. When the cattle be- 
come restless at night the boys sing and whis- 
tle and walk slowly around and around the 
bunch. The sound of the human voice seems 
to have a soothing effect on them. 

When we had gathered five train loads of 
beef they were driven to the railroad station, 
where car after car was loaded. 



XXIII. 

THE EGYPT OF AMEEICA. 

Once I made a horseback ride from Trin- 
idad, Colorado, to El Paso, following the old 
trail over the Grlorietta mountains to Pueblo 
de Taos and thence by easy stages to El Paso, 
Texas, my object being to prospect for placer 
mines. 

It is a wild, weird scene, when after cross- 
ing the Glorietta range, one finds himself in 
this storied valley of the Eio Grande, New 
Mexico, that mysterious land of sunshine, of 
eternal silence and (may I say) eternal sad- 
ness. Sunlight paints the landscapes in 
rarest tints of blues and greys, heightened by 
Vermillion and bright ochre coloKngs on cliff 
and crag, whose silence of ages is broken only 
by the rumble of the train, to relapse again 
into its wonted quietude. The land has been 
asleep for over three hundred years, while 
the world's progress has been going on about 
her. Once she was arousecj when the cattle 



180 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

men came from over the range and stocked 
her valleys, but the cattle did not do well. 
Then she laid down for another nap. These 
valleys are those of sadness like imto fabled 
regions of the hereafter, wherein ungodly 
spirits are destined to roam forever in isola- 
tion from kindred beings. Sad-eyed Mexi- 
cans lean against the snnny side of their 
adobe huts — they are always leaning against 
something, as though their weak anatomies 
would not stand alone. They are poor, very 
poor, but proud. Let a stranger go to their 
casas and their hospitality is never wanting. 
A frugal meal of corn, beans and chile is di- 
vided with as free a hand as a minister's ben- 
ediction. Sad-eyed sheep graze upon the 
scant vegetation of hill and valley, while the 
mournful, philosophic donkey does the work 
of the land, — and perhaps the thinking, too. 
When the shadows of night fall and the 
mountain range stands in dark relief against 
the sky the eye can trace the outlines of gro- 
tesque faces formed by irregular peaks and 
curves. Many of them have traditions old as 
the Sphinx, for the semi-civilization of the 
Aztecs that once inhabited this land dates 
hundreds of years before Cabenza de Vaca 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 181 

explored these valleys of the Pecos and Rio 
Grande. The sacred fires of the Aztecs have 
died out in the ashes of the past, yet there 
are those living who still look for the coming 
of Montezuma. It seems that every race of 
people in their decline look for the coming of 
a redeemer. This belief is kept alive by the 
Pueblo Indians of these valleys, who bow to 
the sun from their housetops as he shines 
from over the mountain range at early morn. 
Like the men of Mars Hill, they believe in 
"the unknown God,'' whose name is too holy 
to be spoken. They hold sacred all animals 
living in or near water, which in this dry cli- 
mate is the greatest blessing. 

At Taos they have a tradition that at the 
flood a few faithful Pueblos gathered upon a 
mountain top and waited long and in vain 
for the waters to subside. At last a youth of 
royal blood and a beautiful virgin decorated 
with brilliant feathers, were let down from 
the cliff as an offering to the angry Deity. 
The waters soon fell, and the youth and 
maiden were transformed into statues of 
stone. With all the silence and sadness of 
this region, contentment seems to reign su- 
preme, and if some genius with the pen of 



182 THIKTY YEARS ON THE FEONTIER. 

Washington Irving will study the simple 
ways of these Mexican people and write of 
their traditions he will do mankind a service 
and make himself famous. 

Swiftly flows the Eio Grande along its 
shallow banks, from whence here and there 
runs an irrigating ditch which waters a patch 
of corn or vineyard, near the adobe houses 
which are scattered thickly along the banks 
of the river, from the Sangre de Christo 
mountains to the Mexican sea. Here for over 
three hundred years a semi-Spanish civiliza- 
tion has existed in a sweet contentment to 
which the Anglo-Saxon race was born a 
stranger. Here is the Egypt of America, 
teeming with the traditions of a simple peo- 
ple, content almost with breath alone. 

The old mission of Las Cruces was among 
the first built by the Jesuits in this valley. 
Behind its altar were two crude paintings of 
Santo Domingo and Santa Eita, and between 
them the statuettes of the Virgin and St. Jo- 
seph. Beneath the whole was a painting, the 
scene of which the artist had located some- 
where on the borderland between heaven and 
hell. Gilded saints were flying off in one di- 
rection while great horned toads and scor- 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 183 

pions were pulling dark browed Mexicans 
and Indians into a sea of flames. At this mis- 
sion was held the first Auto de Fa in New 
Mexico. An Apache chief had been made a 
prisoner and was set to work herding sheep. 
One day he lost one and the holy father said : 
* ' Son of the infidel, what did you do with that 
sheep 1 ' ' 

**I lost it/' replied the Apache, ^*but you 
may take it out of my pay. ' ' 

^'Pay! what pay, you sacrilegious toad?" 
^^Why, out of my daily lashes.'' 
"Holy saints protect us!" exclaimed the 
padre. "Theft, disbelief and the church it- 
self defied ! We will have Judaism here next. 
Away with him to the faggot fires." 

Then, as the flames crept around the 
Apache chained to a stone post, he repented 
and the father baptised him and agreed to 
meet him up yonder, but did not offer to put 
out the fire. As about two hundred and fifty 
years have passed since then, they have per- 
haps met and adjusted their differences by 
this time. 

Cruel as these old religious zealots may 
have been at times, they did a world of good, 
for they semi-civilized the natives. 



184 THIKTY YEAKS ON THE FEONTIER. 

Beside the yellow waters of the Rio Grande 
and near the Sierra Blanco range, lies El 
Paso. Its streets were busy with traffic, and 
tall buildings rose majestically on either side. 
Bnt the wind sweeps through the mountain 
pass and the dust storms darken the sky for 
days at a time. Like all other desert regions 
the chief boast of its inhabitants is climate 
and *Hhis exceptionally bad weather only 
known heretofore to the oldest settler ' ' grows 
irksome when one has heard it five hundred 
times in like regions. Around and about El 
Paso for three hundred miles north, south, 
east, and west, is desert, and to those who 
have never seen a desert country it is sur- 
prising how all conditions of life are changed. 
These conditions are harder than in humid 
countries. In our northern land between 
Canada and the Gulf, that which sustains life 
grows in abundance and few people there are 
who know what it is to be hungry. But here 
in El Paso there are many of the poorer 
classes who actually suffer for something to 
eat. 

Within thirty minutes the entire scene had 
changed. I had crossed the river and was in 
El Paso del Norte, on the Mexican side of the 




We Saw Smoke Signals (page 187). 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 185 

Rio Grande. Narrow lane-like streets, white 
adobe buildings with heavily grated windows 
make the stranger feel that he has intruded 
on a convention of county jails. In half an 
hour I had gone backward three centuries. 
Silent, dark-browed figures walked the 
streets with Spanish cloak or serape wound 
majestically around them, donkeys laden with 
wood, peddlers with hogskins filled with 
pulque, strangely attired Mexicans, all form- 
ed a weird street scene not soon to be for- 
gotten. 

It was on the plaza here that General 
Bonito Juarez camped his little force of 150 
men while he went to Washington to appeal 
to this government to enforce the Monroe 
doctrine in the midst of our own rebellion. 
When the American ultimatum went forth to 
France, Napoleon III withdrew his French 
troops. Then Juarez marched on to the City 
of Mexico gathering strength as he went. 
The unfortunate Maximilian fell into his 
hands and was executed on the ^ ^ Cerra de las 
Campus '' (The Hill of the Bells), near Quer- 
etaro on the 19th of June, 1867. General 
Bonito Juarez was a full blooded Aztec whom 



186 THIRTY YEARS ON" THE FRONTIER. 

Fate seems to have ordained to bring about 
the political regeneration of his country. 

It was a gala day in El Paso del Norte. A 
company of Eurales from the interior was 
to contest in a shooting match with the Car- 
bine Rifles and bets were running high. Both 
sides did some good shooting at 500 yards 
and the Carbine Rifles won. Bets were paid 
freely and everybody was in a good humor. 

I had formed the acquaintance of Captain 
Esperanza Provincio and at his invitation I 
fired a few shots, hitting the bull's eye each 
time with one of the Mexican carbines. 

This exctied everybody's attention and 
soon some Americans offered to bet that I 
could beat any man they had in their com- 
pany shooting at 500 yards. The bets were 
taken and I was pitted against six crack shots 
belonging to the Carbine Rifles. I won in 
every instance and received a neat sum for 
my skill from my American friends who had 
won the Mexicans' money. Captain Provin- 
cio, not to be outdone in generosity, caused a 
handsome silver medal to be made which he 
afterwards presented to me with the compli- 
ments of his company. 

The Military Band from Chihuahua dis- 



THIKTY YEAKS ON THE FEONTIEE. 187 

coursed sweet music in the plaza that night 
to a large crowd of citizens from both towns. 

The Mexican plaza is the national chimney 
corner, where at evening a band plays wild, 
weird strains of martial music, and the young 
gather about the old to hear tales of daring 
and valor. It is the plaza where the tradi- 
tions are kept alive and where the young are 
taught that the very acme of glory in life is 
the battlefield. 

The soft effects of moonlight, the plaza 
with its green trees, fountains, and saunter- 
ing of senors and senoritas in the presence of 
the silvertoned bells of an old cathedral and 
the weird strains of martial music, form the 
pleasant remembrances of El Paso del Norte, 
since named Juarez. 

In company with a Mexican miner named 
Martenez I rode westward along the Mexican 
border for two days, and thence toward the 
northwest to Gila Eiver, when one morning 
we saw to the southward a column of smoke 
ascending. We knew it to be Indian signals 
and so rode our bronchos into a clump of 
bushes on the river banks in order to be out 
of sight. 

On scanning the plain with my field glass 



188 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FEONTIEE. 

I saw a column of dust rising far to the north 
like a pillar of smoke and rightly guessed it 
to be caused by a body of horsemen. From 
the speed they were making, I judged they 
were either pursuers or being pursued. In 
either event, we felt fairly safe, as our bron- 
chos were in good condition, were splendid 
animals, and as we had used them well of late, 
we believed we could outdistance them if they 
proved to be hostile Indians. Nearer the 
cloud of dust approached and the closer I 
looked with my field glass until I discovered 
they were Apaches making all haste to reach 
the mountains. They crossed the Gila Eiver, 
which was at flood tide, five hundred yards 
from where we were concealed and disap- 
peared in the direction from whence we saw 
the smoke signals. We had made up our 
minds to remain in our hiding places until 
night, when I saw another dust cloud in the 
same direction as the first, and in a little 
while I made out that the dust was raised by 
a party of scouts and rode out to mee them. 
They were led by Captain Jack Crawford 
and were in pursuit of the murderous band 
of Apaches who had been killing ranchmen 
in the upper country. 



THIRTY YEARS OIT THE FRONTIER. 189 

The scouts continued on the pursuit, while 
we rode away in the direction of Silver City. 

It was that band of marauding Apaches 
which we saw crossing the Gila River that 
furnished the cause for the Geronimo war, 
which broke out soon afterwards. It was not 
until March, in 1886, that General Crook cap- 
tured Geronimo and his band of Chiricahua 
Apaches, who escaped from him while they 
were being taken to Ft. Bowie. The chief 
and band were recaptured by General Nelson 
A. Miles in Mexico some months afterwards 
and sent to Fort Pickens, Florida. Geronimo 
and fourteen of his band were afterwards 
taken to Ft. Sill, Indian Territory. Here the 
cunning old Chief spent most of his time play- 
ing monte with the soldiers. 



XXIV. 

IN THE DOME OF THE SKY. 

There are three ways of reaching the sum- 
mit of Pike's Peak — walking, riding a burro, 
or seated comfortably in one of the coaches 
of the Cog Road. 

It was three o'clock in the afternoon when 
the car was pulled out of the yards at the 
foot of the Peak. The strongly-built little 
engine puffed like a living thing, obedient to 
the task of drawing its heavy load. The 
wheels moved rapidly, and we ascended the 
steepest mountain railroad in the world. It 
wound about the mountain sides in little 
curves, climbing, always climbing higher and 
higher, until we shuddered at the dizzy 
heights as we looked down into the great 
yawning chasms thousands of feet below. 

The air grew cooler in the deep mountain 
defiles densely wooded with fir, pine, cedar 
and quaking asp. A great fire once swept 
up these gorges and burned away the fir and 



THIETY YEAKS ON THE FEONTIEK. 191 

pine in patches ; in their place came the quak- 
ing asp, growing here and there in thickets. 

Along the slopes and in the dells, wild flow- 
ers grew with the luxuriant profusion of a 
semi-tropical clime. There were columbines 
and tiger lilies growing at an altitude of ten 
thousand feet. 

Nature has done some queer things in the 
mighty rocks which stand sentinel guard 
along the route. 

One great boulder is named the Hooded 
Monk, because of its resemblance to the hu- 
man head in a monk's cowl. There is a Gog 
and Magog. The Sphynx, the Lone Fisher- 
man, and many other images of man, bird 
and beast, wrought by nature 's hand in stone. 

"We glided by one of the loveliest glens in 
all the mountains; it was called Shady 
Springs. Here the oriole, the raven and the 
big blue jay of the mountains have builded 
their nests and take their morning baths in 
waters clear as crystal from a spring that 
gushed from fern and moss covered banks. 

Farther on to the right a stream plunges 
in wild, mad swirl of clear waters and dash- 
ing from rock to rock in foamy white, forms 



192 THIKTY YEAKS ON THE FRONTIER. 

Echo Falls. An elephant's head in bass re- 
lief was here to be seen wrought in stone. 

We rounded Cameron's Cone and Sheep 
Mountain and soon began the ascent of the 
* ^ Big Hill, ' ' which has a rise of 1,300 feet to 
the mile. 

Nearing timber line, the road ahead ap- 
pears to be almost at an angle of 45 degrees. 

Higher and higher ; the great chasm below 
grew almost a mile deeper. On one side there 
were masses of square rock which looked like 
they were broken by human hands. Here, far 
above timber line, a variety of wild flowers 
blossomed, while among the rocks lived some 
of the strangest little animals, the whistling- 
marmot, a fur animal about the size of an 
overgrown cat, and the peka, which has the 
legs of a rabbit and the head of a mountain 
rat; there were also minks, weasels, porcu- 
pines and mountain rats. 

At the summit was where the magnificence 
of the great panorama burst upon our view. 
Northward, away down on the bluish haze of 
the horizon, rose the Arapahoe peaks — Long 
and Grey's Peak, with their white summits 
glistening in the setting sun. Northwest, 
Mt. Massive and Mt. Sheridan were outlined 



THIKTY YEAES ON THE FKONTIEE. 193 

against the clear blue sky, while the green 
sward of the famous South Park, a hundred 
miles distant, lay between. College Eange, 
Mt. Yale, Mt. Princeton, Mt. Ouray and Cav- 
enaugh reared their rugged heads far to the 
west, while green mountain ranges of lesser 
note lay half way between them. 

Far to the southwest, far as the eye could 
reach, faintly outlined against the sky, rose 
the snowy peaks of the Sangre de Christo and 
Sierra Blanco Mountains on the other side of 
the grand San Luis Valley. 

Looking to the south, were the Spanish 
Peaks and range of Greenhorn Mountains, 
and a little to the southeast rose the snow- 
capped Gloriettas on the borders of New 
Mexico. 

To the east, lay the mighty plains, stretch- 
ing away to where the blue of the sky blended 
in coppery tones with the billowy green. 

There were dark spots here and there that 
were dense forests of pine. The cloud ban- 
ners hung above, in all the gorgeous colors of 
sunset in crimson, purple and gold. 

A dark shadow crept out upon the plain 
toward the east, like the finger of a mighty 
giant. It moved rapidly along, covering the 



194 THIRTY YEAES ON THE FRONTIER. 

yellow sand lines that mark the course of old 
river beds, and finally, this shadow of Pike's 
Peak was covered by the shadows of other 
mountains lower down, until the plain was 
shrouded in the sable garb of eventide. 

But westward, the gold and crimson of the 
sky lingered long above the distant peak of 
Mt. Ouray. The purple haze grew denser, 
and the silence of the hour was made more 
solemn by the mountains standing out in dark 
silhouette as the shadows of the night grew 
deeper and denser. 

At such a time as this, one feels as though 
he stod upon the boundary of another world, 
while all about the wide white waste and hush 
of space, eternity and the infinite were call- 
ing to other glories, too great for the under- 
standing of the human mind. 

Here, in the very dome of the skies, in this 
clear air, the bright worlds seem to hover 
over, while the vault is strewn with stars, like 
isles of light in the misty sea above our heads. 
The purity of the heavenly prospect awakens 
that eternal predisposition to melancholy, 
which dwells in the depth of the soul, and 
soon the spectacle absorbs us in a vague and 
indefinable reverie. It is then that thousands 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 195 

of questions spring up in our mind, and a 
thousand points of interrogation rise to our 
sight — the great enigma of creation. 

The harvest moon shed her yellow light 
over the distant plain, and gilded with a 
phosphorescent light the rocks and crags of 
the almost bottomless chasm below. The 
rocks took on fantastic shapes, while distant 
mountains rose in spectral form. 

I sat throughout the night, watching the 
ever changing panorama, the most wondrous 
ever spread out to the gaze of man. 

The moon and stars were bright above, 
while far down below storm clouds had 
formed where within their inky blackness 
the forked lightning played like so many 
fiery serpents. 

There were thunderous crashes in the wild 
rocky pit below, where huge rocks were shiv- 
ered by lightning bolts, while echo, echoing 
back the thunders of heaven's artillery, 
would seem as though a legion of imprisoned 
Joshuas were reaching upward again for that 
sun which would stand still no more over the 
plains of Agalon. 

The shades of night grew deeper and then 
the blackness T^^as driven back from the east 



196 THIKTY YEARS OIsT THE FROITTIER. 

by a flush of grey, gradually changing to a 
deep scarlet tinged with yellow and the sun 
burst above a dashing sea of clouds. There 
were purple and crimson waves below rising 
and falling in mighty billows. A shipless and 
shoreless ocean whose raging bosom claims 
no living thing. 

An hour more and this purple sea of clouds 
has drifted on forever from the sight of hu- 
man eyes. 

The summer sun beamed once more upon 
the vast panorama. Far down upon the 
green mesa lay Lake Moraine, glistening in 
the morning light like a molten mass of silver. 

Smoke was seen to rise from Denver and 
Pueblo, both fully sixty miles away. Some 
smelters in Cripple Creek and Victor could 
be seen with the naked eye, while the streets 
of Colorado Springs were but sandy marks 
like a checkerboard upon the plain. 

I descended the peak on foot amid the beau- 
teous scenes of green mountain defiles, where 
dashing waters sing eternal symphonies amid 
ferns and flowers, and the song of birds glad- 
den the heart in their sweet echoes from rock 
to rock. 



XXV. 

WHERE NATURE IS AT HER BEST. 

If one would view the wondrous surround- 
ings of Manitou, in all their grandeur, let 
him some bright morning stroll up the long 
yellow road that winds its serpentine course 
through Williams Canon. A little brook with 
waters cold and clear as crystal, dashes along 
its pebbly bed beside the road, murmuring as 
it were, a song of regret at leaving its en- 
chanted home on its journey to the sea. The 
road is known as Temple Drive, named so be- 
cause many towering rocks look, at first 
glance, like ruined temples of India or of 
Egypt along the Nile. 

At times the road narrows to barely car- 
riage room between great high cliffs, and 
again abruptly brings the majestic panorama 
of the canon into view. High above, among 
the mountain crags is the Cathedral of St. 
Peter, like a massive ruin whose cornice, col- 
umn and frescoed walls had fallen with decay 



198 THIRTY YEAES ON THE FRONTIER. 

ages past. A little farther and the Ampi- 
theatre rises against the cliffs in hues of 
brown and yellow, with brighter streaks of 
golden ochre here and there, which fairly 
gleam and glisten in the morning sun. High 
above and in the background on either side 
are hills of emerald green, studded with 
cedar and pine, and dotted with flowers of 
gorgeous color and of form, found elsewhere 
only in Alpine lands. There are towering 
rocks that rise a thousand feet above the 
road, which resemble the ruins of a Moorish 
citadel. There are towers, mosques and 
temples, with turrets and battlements, need- 
ing only the white-robed figure of the Arab in 
turban to make one fancy himself suddenly 
transported to that enchanting and myster- 
ious land of Sultan and slave. No sky of Tan- 
giers was ever deeper, clearer or bluer, and 
no air of Geneva was ever purer or sweeter. 
The road makes a sharp turn and traverses 
backward nearly half a mile, then turns again 
and runs in its original direction, climbing 
the mountain side like a great yellow serpent 
resting its head a thousand feet among the 
crags, where eagles build their nests; the 
white and red painted building that marks the 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 199 

entrance to the Cave of the Winds, does duty 
as the serpent ^s head. From this dizzy point 
of sight, the great mountain gorge with its 
grey and brown rocks, and the sloping foot- 
hills of green that stretch away to where fair 
Manitou lies cradled in the valley, form a 
wondrous panorama. 

Eastward, down on the horizon, far as the 
eye can reach, stretch the mighty plains, 
westward the higher range of the eternal 
Eockies, and above all rises the snow-capped 
summit of Pike 's Peak, about whose whitened 
crest float the fleecy clouds of the soft, still 
summer morning. 

At the entrance of the Cave of the Winds 
one follows the guide into the dark pathway 
that leads into the subterranean chambers, 
where at some remote period a wild mountain 
cataract has whirled and plunged its mad- 
dening waters, in swirl and maelstrom into 
the black abyss of the earth. One is so sud- 
denly transported from the gladsome and 
awe-inspiring scenes without, that the lamp 
and figure of the guide become spectral, his 
voice sounds in hollow tones and is echoed 
back from cavernous depths as though titanic 
monsters were repeating his words. 



200 THIETY YEARS ON THE I^ROi^^TIEE. 

Knowing the cause, one bursts into a laugh, 
then the monsters laugh, too, long and loud, 
and still others take up the laugh, way down 
the black corridors, and high above in domes, 
as though all the imps of darkness were there 
to laugh at one in revenge for intrusion. 

The guide flashes a magnesium light and 
the pilgrim beholds the wonders of Curtain 
Hall, which nature has ornamented with 
strangely colored stalactites glistening here 
and there on the cavern walls, and again 
where they form a curtain of an intricate 
work and beauty as though wrought by mai- 
den hands, amid scenes of love and apple 
blossoms. Mutely you follow the flaring lamp 
of the guide into the blackness of winding 
passages and across bridges that span bot- 
tomless pits opening into the very breast of 
the mountain, and when the magnesium light 
is again flashed, one sees the arching dome of 
the great canopy hall, its stalactite nymphs, 
Bed of Cauliflowers, Frescoed Ceiling, Lake 
Basin, Grandmother's Skillet, Bat's Wing, 
Prairie Dog Village and Fairy Scene; all 
presenting a picture weird and ghost-like in 
the moment of stillness, and heightened by 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE fRONTIER. 201 

the demoniacal, fiendish voices that repeat 
your every word. 

On through other crooked subterranean 
passages where other demons mock the sound 
of your footsteps, through what the guide 
calls Boston Avenue, one enters Diamond 
Hall. The lofty ceiling is decorated its en- 
tire length by graceful festoons and wreaths 
of coral and flowering alabaster. The walls 
sparkle and scintillate with the rainbow 
shades, thrown back from the myriad bril- 
liants that stud these walls like diamonds set 
by hand in some antique mosaic work. 

In these regions of darkness you are led 
by the guide until the Hall of Beauty is lit vp 
to your astonished gaze. Crystal flowers of 
the most delicate design and exquisite work- 
manship hang in festoons from every nook 
and corner. Sparkling incrustations that ri- 
val the beauty of Arctic frosts and glitter in 
the bright light are sparkling on every side. 
Most wondrous of all there are a million stal- 
actite figures in miniature that appear to be 
in a pandemonium of outlandish contortions. 
Maybe, who knows, but what the goblin spir- 
its once lived here and worked out curious 
things in translucent stone, further down the 



202 THIKTY YEAKS ON THE FRONTIEK. 

black passages of earth and caught a glimpse 
of our ancestors in some of the great halls of 
torture way down below, and so reproduced 
the scene as Jack Frost has been wont to 
paint the leaves of summer on our frosted 
window panes. 

The Magi of this dark abode, the guide in 
wide sombrero, black eyed and wearing a 
mustache fierce as a bandit of the Corsican 
isle, though harmless as a Kansas Populist, 
beckons on and leads the way. Here the 
Bridal Chamber, and there writhing rep- 
tiles, dancing devils, monkeys, beasts, birds m 
every form and riotous posture. Then as the 
weird wilderness is shut out in semi-dark- 
ness, one is inclined to ask of him with lamp 
and sombrero, ^* Mister, have I got 'em, or 
have you?'' 

The light flashes on Crystal Palace, where 
gems and jewels bedeck the walls, where huge 
chrysanthemums or chestnut burrs stand out 
in bold relief in fadeless crystal flowers 
moulded from tinted rock, and all seem to 
mutely plead for recognition as we pass. 
These silent beauties hidden away under the 
mountain slopes, where the rays of sun can 
never reach, speak with the beauty of their 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 203 

creation, to the soul with as great a love and 
power as the violet in the sequestered glens. 

It is mysterious. It is strange. It is one 
of those unaccountable things in nature which 
no man can explain that here in the very 
bowels of the earth, human scenes have been 
reproduced and human passions portrayed. 

Here perhaps centuries before man's eyes 
gazed upon the scene, we find in moulded 
stone, the head of a buffalo, the skeleton of a 
mastodon, the drapery of a palace, the bride 
at the altar, the face of sorrow, the Nymphs 
of Love. War and Poetry are depicted upon 
these stones. 

Once more the light of day, the great 
chasm beneath, the turquoise skies above, and 
mighty plains beyond, brings one to the realm 
of the outer world. 

The spectral figure of an hour ago is a 
pleasant faced young man, who bids you fol- 
low the winding path that leads around the 
mountain side some three hundred yards and 
which ends at the entrance to the Grand Cav- 
erns. 

Desiring to see all, you meekly follow an- 
other guide through a dark labyrinth and 
find yourself in the mighty Rotunda of the 



204 THIRTY YEAES ON THE FEONTIER. 

Caverns. Here loyal hands have raised mon- 
uments to Lee, Grant and McKinley. They 
are bnilt of fragments of stone cast by vis- 
itors to the memory of these heroes. The 
Imp, the guide, motions on; you are next 
within a mighty auditorium and as there 
comes upon you the awful silence and still- 
ness of the hour, you hear musical notes, 
swelling and cadencing louder and louder un- 
til they break in thunderous tones within the 
cavernous depths, ^ ' Nearer, -Nearer, My God 
to Thee. ' ' High above, mid the domes of the 
cavern, the light shows the organist to be 
playing upon the stalactites which Nature 
has attuned to the same chords as instru- 
ments made by human hands. These stalac- 
tites are of crystal, and have the same reso- 
nant sound as though they were of finely tem- 
pered glass. Up and down the corridors of 
the cave, through winding passages and cir- 
cling galleries above, come echoes of *' Near- 
er, My God to Thee, ' ' in waves and billows of 
sound, such as is only heard by artificial 
means in the Notre Dame of Paris. 

Round about somewhere, in one of the 
chambers, near the entrance, the visitor is 
shown a human skeleton, as it was found at 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 205 

the time of the discovery of the cave. It be- 
longed perhaps to that race of men known as 
the Cliff Dwellers, who once npon a time, 
when the world was new, lived, loved and 
reared a race of men in this fair region of 
the west whom Saxby, a western poet, touches 
with his magic pen, and beautiifies the tradi- 
tion of them when he says, 
* ^ Dismantled towers and turrets broken, 
Like grim war-worn braves who keep 
A silent guard with grief unspoken 

Watch o'er the graves, by the canon weep, 
The nameless graves of a race forgotten 

Whose deeds, whose words, whose fate are 
one 
With the mist, long ages past, begotten of 
the sun.'' 

The sun is now casting his shadows toward 
the east. From this point of sight we see the 
Midland trains creeping from tunnels like 
monster creatures of the Azotic period crawl- 
ing from their lair. There are green valleys 
below, and there is also a long serpentine 
road leading to this side of the mountain by 
which visitors again reach the pleasant 
shades of Manitou. Silence, and even sad- 
ness, abound in the green-clad mountains be- 



206 THIBTY YEAKS ON THE FRONTIEB. 

yond. They speak in whispers to themselves 
and you can understand them if you will. 
They tell you in sweet, soft voices of the song 
of birds, the lullaby of mountain brooks, and 
by gentle winds that sing a song of peace 
through cedar, fir and pine, that the love of 
nature, is the love of nature 's God. 



XXVI. 

WHEN THE WEST WAS NEW. 

Thirty years have passed since I first 
crossed the plains. The buffalo and ante- 
lope have disappeared and in their stead 
herds of cattle and sheep graze in countless 
thousands. Farms are tilled where raging 
fires swept the mighty plains in ungoverned 
fury ; cities and towns rear their spires where 
once stood Indian tepees. The westward 
march of civilization has stretched across the 
continent and redeemed the desert. The soil 
has been made to yield its harvest and the 
eternal hills to give up their buried treasure. 
For the men who made the trails by which 
these things were done, life's shadows are 
falling toward the east. They braved the 
vicissitudes of the western wilderness as he- 
roic as any soldier faced the battlefield; and 
the trails over which the pioneers slowly 
made their way across the desert wastes, 
were blazed with blood and fire. Women, 



208 THIKTY YEAES ON THE FKONTIEE. 

too, on the frontier, volumes might be written 
of her sacrifices — Indians, poverty, years of 
patient toil, far from former home and 
friends, the luxuries of organized society de- 
nied, all for the purpose of earning a home 
and a competence for declining years. 

It was my good fortune to become person- 
ally acquainted with many early pioneers of 
the west and number them among my warm- 
est friends, and as I recall to mind some of 
their heroic deeds I feel that these chapters 
would be incomplete without a personal men- 
tion of a few of them. 

Captain Jack Crawford, the poet scout, is 
one of those noble characters whose memory 
will live so long as records exist of the pio- 
neers who braved the vicissitudes of the fron- 
tier and made possible our Western civiliza- 
tion of today. A man of broad mind, daring 
and brave and yet with all the sweet tender- 
ness of a child of nature, he became great by 
achievements alone. Others have gained a 
temporary fame by dime novel writers. Cap- 
tain Jack, in comparison with others, stands 




Captain Jack Crawford (page 208), 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 209 

out as a diamond of the first water. He has 
helped to make more trails than any scout un- 
less it was Kit Carson. That was before the 
war. During that struggle he was wounded 
three times in the service of his country. 
When the war closed he was for many years 
chief of scouts under General Custer. He 
laid out Leedville in the Black Hills in 1876, 
and was of great service to the government 
in the settlement of the Indian troubles which 
succeeded the Custer massacre. 

Captain Jack is one of the very few thrown 
together with the wild, rough element of the 
frontier who maintained a strictly moral 
character. I knew him in the ^ ^ Hills ' ' in 1876 
and have known him ever since, and have al- 
ways found him to be the same genial, whoie- 
souled, brave Captain Jack. 

John McCoach, a pioneer of the sixties, 
was a among a party near the headwaters of 
Wind River, Wyoming, in August, 1866, 
who defeated a thousand warriors with the 
first Henri rifles used on the plains. The 



210 THIRTY YEAES ON THE FRONTIER. 

story is best told in Mr. McCoacli's own lan- 
guage. 

^^Our mule trains consisting of thirty- 
eight wagons and forty-two men, left Fort 
Leavenworth, Kansas, in April, 1866, for Vir- 
ginia City, Montana. We were all old sol- 
diers and most of us had seen four years of 
war and, inured as we were to dangers, we 
cared but little for the hostile Indians of the 
plains. 

''When we reached Fort Laramie, a big 
council of Indians was in progress. Chiefs 
Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, American Horse 
and others of lesser note were there to de- 
mand guns and ammunition from the govern- 
ment, saying they needed them with which to 
hunt game. Officials of high rank from 
Washington were there to listen to them and 
among the newspaper correspondents was 
Henry M. Stanley, who had been sent out 
by the New York Herald. 

''After days of deliberation the Indians 
were refused the arms and they broke camp 
in bad humor. 

"Before allowing our party to proceed the 
commander of the fort had us lined up for an 
inspection of our arms which were a miscella- 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 211 

neoTis collection all the way from an old 
muzzle-loading rifle to a modern musket. He 
told us we were too poorly armed to proceed, 
when the wagon boss took him to some of the 
wagons and showed him 200 Henri rifles and 
abundant ammunition which we were freight- 
ing to gun dealers in Virginia City. He then 
allowed us to go. 

^^I was herding the mules one afternoon 
near the headwaters of Wind River, when a 
party of Sioux Indians, led by Little Thun- 
der, made a dash, intending to stampede the 
animals. One of them carried a rawhide bag 
containing some pebbles, which made a hid- 
eous noise. Despite their efforts, the mules 
broke for our camp of circled wagons. I tried 
to shoot the Indian with the rattle bag but 
missed. Then I dismounted and the next 
shot I cut the quiver of arrows from his back 
when he gave a long yell and throwing him- 
self on the side of his pony, got away. 

^^When I reached camp the rifles had been 
distributed. We were called from our slum- 
bers the next morning at four o 'clock and told 
to keep quiet and hold our fire. 

^ ^ With the first gray streak of dawn about 
one thousand warriors began to encircle us, 



212 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

riding at full speed and like a great serpent, 
drawing the coil closer about us with each 
revolution of the circle. Then the order came 
and forty-two blazing rifles with eighteen 
shots to each one dealt out death. Four years 
of war had taught the men the value of a 
steady nerve and deliberate aim and before 
the astonished Indians could retreat the plain 
was strewn with their dead and wounded. 

* * These Indians had been at the Fort Lara- 
mie council and had seen us drawn up in line 
with our old assortment of guns for inspec- 
tion and had counted on us being easy prey. 
They were the first Henri rifles used on the 
plains and caused the Indians to speak of us 
in whispers, as the white men who could load 
a gun once and then shoot all day. That 
morning we built our fires with arrows and 
cooked our breakfast. After that the Indians 
avoided us as though we were devouring 
monsters. ' ' 



The experience of John McCoach's party 
in surprising Little Thunder's braves with 
their Henri rifles, calls to mind a story often 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 213 

told in Fort Laramie of how General W. S. 
Harney fooled these same Sioux Indians un- 
der Little Thunder a few years previous to 
their attack on the McCoach outfit. Jake 
Smith, a soldier with General Harney in the 
60 ^s thus relates the story: 

^^ General Harney established his head- 
quarters in Leavenworth, Kansas. Little 
Thunder was at the head of the Sioux and 
sent word that he was willing either to fight 
or shake hands with the white soldier. Har- 
ney replied that if the Indian was without 
choice in the matter it might as well be fight ; 
besides, as he remembered his orders, he was 
to whip some one. So Harney met Little 
Thunder and about a thousand war men on 
the North Platte in Nebraska. He whipped 
them good and some of the Indians' friends 
back East tried to make trouble for Harney 
because he had not had a long preliminary 
confab with Little Thunder. That Sioux 
band was a mild-mannered set long after 
Harney went back to Leavenworth. 

* * It was after this fight that Harney threw 
the Society for the Protection of Western 
Savages into a particular frenzy. The wagon 
trail for Oregon and California led from Fort 



214 THIRTY YEARS OK THE FRONTIER. 

Leavenworth to Fort Kearney, Neb., then to 
Julesburg, in Colorado, from there to Fort 
Laramie, through old South Pass to Badger 
and then to Salt Lake. The trip by ox train 
took about one hundred days with good luck. 
I know of a party that was on the road 300 
days, delayed by Indians and then snow- 
bound. That wasn't a pleasant winter for a 
boy of 16. 

^^ Every now and then a band of Sioux 
would ride up to an ox train, kill if they felt 
like it and always drive away the stock. Sol- 
diers would be sent out and have the pleasure 
of following the Indians' trail until the 
weather would make winter quarters neces- 
sary. Harney started from Leavenworth 
after one band, taking about 400 cavalrymen, 
or dragoons. The Indians loafed along 
ahead of him till they reached the mountains, 
and then Harney turned back. It was the 
old story, the Sioux said, and their scouts 
followed the soldiers until they were well into 
Kansas. Then the Sioux knew the country 
was clear for new operations. 

** Harney stopped on the Blue Kiver in 
Northern Kansas near where Marysville now 
stands. A wagon train reached there from 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 215 

Leavenworth and Harney had all the freight 
unloaded — simply siezed the train — then he 
put 400 soldiers into those wagons and in 
two were mountain guns. The great covers 
were pulled close and leaving a guard over 
the abandoned freight and horses, Harney 
started on his journey as a bull-whacker. Not 
a soldier or officer was permitted to put his 
head from under a cover in the day time, and 
only at night a few got leave to stretch their 
legs. All day they sat in those wagon beds, 
hot and dusty, playing cards, fighting and 
chewing tobacco for pastime. 

^^ There were twenty-six of those wagons 
and they trailed along as if they were carry- 
ing dead freight; no faster nor slower than 
the ordinary freighters, and making camp at 
the usual places, forming the usual corral of 
wagons and herding stock at night. The train 
reached Fort Kearny and slowly went across 
the South Platte to Julesburg. Occasional 
Indian signs made Harney have hope. 

*^The outfit was seventy miles on the way 
to Laramie when the big day came, and it 
came quick. Behind them on the trail the 
men on the outside saw a war party — some 
say there were five hundred Indians in it. 



216 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

Even if they liadn 't been painted tlie fact that 
they were without women or children would 
have told the story. The train made the usual 
preparations for an Indian attack, throwing 
the wagons into a circle, or more of an el- 
lipse, and unhooking the five lead yokes to 
each wagon. A front wheel of each wagon 
touched a hind wheel of the one in front and 
the tongues were turned to the outside. At 
the front end of the corral an opening about 
fifteen feet wide was left, but at the rear the 
opening into the corral was about fifty feet 
wide. That, also, was according to the 
freighters' methods; after a night camp the 
cattle would be driven into the corral through 
the big end to be yoked for the day. 

^ ' Harney didn 't have time to drive his oxen 
into the corral, or else he didn't want to. 
Only the five yoke of leaders were unhooked 
and they were then chained to the front wheel 
of their wagon. The space in the corral was 
all clear for the Indians, whose method of at- 
tacking a wagon train was to rush into the 
corral and do their shooting. They were a 
happy lot of braves this day; the war band 
started for the train when the corral was 
forming ; they spread out like a fan and then 



THrRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 217 

came togettier again and started for the big 
opening as hard as their war ponies could 
carry them. A whooping, variegated mob 
with no more clothes than the paint gave it 
fell into the corral and then real fun began. 

^' Those soldiers, who had been sweating 
under canvas for a few weeks wanted excite- 
ment and revenge. The tarpaulins went up 
and they shot down into that mess of braves 
as fast as they could load. The two mountain 
guns completed the surprise and the bucks 
hardly fired a shot before their ponies were 
climbing over one another to get out the way 
they came. It was the only real Indian panic. 
Wlien the last Sioux brave able to ride disap- 
peared across the prairie there was a big 
mess to clean up. In those days the Indians 
needed school all the year around. However, 
one old buck, a little chief, seemed to be im- 
pressed. He was near a mountain gun when 
the fire opened. ^Harney is the man who 
shot wagons at us, ^ is the way he told about it 
years later. 

********* 

Charles S. Stroble, '* Mountain Charley,'' 
known as the cowboy painter, was adopted by 



218 THIETY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

the Ute Indians at the age of nineteen. I 
have often heard him tell the following exper- 
ience : 

*^It was the most marvelous instance of 
daredevil bravery I ever witnessed. It hap- 
pened in 1866 when I was living with the Utes 
west of the range in Middle Park, Colorado. 
They had adopted me a year or so before 
when I was twenty years of age. My name 
in Ute was Paghaghet, which means long- 
haired. ' 

^'It was at this time that the old fend be- 
tween the Utes and Arapahoes was at its 
height. Our scouts found theArapahoes com- 
ing in from North Park in the endeavor to 
surprise some of the Utes' hunting parties. 
Our runners having come in and informed us, 
we soon collected a war party and started 
north to intercept our enemies. 

* ' I was with the scouting party which went 
in advance, and I was the only white man in 
the entire tribe. We found the sign left by 
their scouts, and then concealed ourselves un- 
til our war party could come up. As soon as 
reinforcements arrived we deployed on either 
side of a gulch or canon, with our horses hid- 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 219 

den away among the rocks and timber in 
charge of horse-holders. 

^'We had not waited long when we sighted 
the advance of the Arapahoes down below us 
in the gulch. We were unnoticed, because we 
left no tracks in the gulch and had deployed 
some distance below. 

^^When the main body of the enemy had 
passed our place of concealment we opened 
fire on them from each side of the gulch, and 
they, not knowing our numbers, were panic- 
stricken. They wheeled and came tumbling 
back up the gulch in great confusion, and all 
the time subjected to our fire. To be sure, 
they were returning the fire wherever they 
caught sight of us, but we had by far the best 
of them and peppered them hotly. 

^^The Utes got about eight scalps, as the 
Arapahoes, although they carried their 
wounded with them in their flight, were in too 
big a hurry to look after the dead. 

' ^ My Indian brother, Paah, or * Black Tail- 
ed Deer,'' and Wangbich, the ^Antelope,' 
were with me behind some sheltering rocks, 
and on each side of me. As the Arapahoes 
were scurrying away through the caiion be- 
low we noticed particularly one fine-looking 



220 THIKTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

young buck, wearing a splendid war bonnet, 
which flaunted bravely in the breeze. This 
fellow was singled out by Paah. At the crack 
of his rifle the Arapahoe threw out his arms 
and fell backward from his pony and the 
pony galloped away. 

*^Paah, elated at the success of his shot, 
dropped his rifle and plunged down the steep 
side of the canon, which ran up here at an 
angle of about forty-five degrees, the other 
Indians passing all the time and letting loose 
at him a fusillade of rifle shots and flights 
of arrows. At length Paah got to his dead 
Arapahoe, planted his foot on the back of the 
man's neck, grasped both scalplock and side 
braids, gave them a turn on his wrist and 
with the aid of his knife secured the full scalp. 

**Then seizing the war bonnet, he came 
tearing up the side of the gulch, his trophies 
in one hand and his knife held dagger wise in 
the otEer, to assist him in making the steep 
ascent. 

* ^ The arrows and bullets flew thickly about 
him, but, marvelous to tell, he arrived on the 
little flat space back of us without a scratch. 
Waving his bloody spoils above his head he 
essayed to give the Ute yell of victory, but 



THIETY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 221 

he was so exhausted that he was only able to 
let out a funny squeak as he fell prostrate to 
avoid the shots that were now pouring in our 
direction. Wangbich and I covered him the 
best we could by emptying our six-shooters at 
the Arapahoes, and he finally succeeded in 
crawling to shelter. 

*^0n the return of our war expedition to 
the principal village we celebrated our vic- 
tory in royal style. The Utes from other vil- 
lages kept pouring in, and there was dancing 
afternoon and night for many days. This 
chief village was located under some high 
rocks on the Grand river, near a hot spring. 
The principal feature of the celebration was 
a scalp parade, a gorgeous affair in which 
all kinds of silvered ornaments, feathered 
and beaded costumes were worn. I after- 
ward painted this splendid scene as it ap- 
peared to me and the picture is now hanging 
in the Iroquois club in Chicago. * * 



** Possibly my experience in the bullwhack- 
ing days across the plains,'' says George P. 
Marvin, ^^does not materially differ from 



222 THIRTY YEAES ON THE FRONTIER. 

that of other men who piloted six yoke of cat- 
tle hitched to eighty hundred of freight 
across the desert. Yet there were many inci- 
dents connected with life upon the plains that 
have never been written. 

** There was scarcely a day passed but 
something occurred that would furnish ma- 
terial upon which the writer of romance 
could build an interesting book of adventures. 

''In the freighting days of the early '60 's, 
the overland trail up the Platte Eiver was a 
broad road 200 or more feet in width. This 
was reached from various Missouri Eiver 
points, as a great trunk line of railroad is 
now supplied by feeders. From Leaven- 
worth, Atchison and St. Joe, those freighters 
who went the northern route crossed the 
Blue ETver at Marysville, Kansas, Oketo and 
other points, and traveled up the Little Blue, 
crossing over the divide and striking the big 
road at Dogtown, ten miles east of Fort 
Kearney. From Nebraska City, which was the 
principal freighting point upon the river 
from '64 until the construction of the Union 
Pacific railroad. What was known as the 
Steam Wagon road was the great trail. This 
feeder struck the Platte at a point about 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 223 

forty miles east of Kearney. It derived its 
name from an attempt to draw freight wag- 
ons over it by the use of steam, after the man- 
ner of the traction engine of today. 

^*My first trip across the plains was over 
this route, which crossed the Big Blue a few 
miles above the present town of Crete, Ne- 
braska. At the Blue crossing we were * or- 
ganized,' a detachment of soldiers being 
there for that purpose, and no party of less 
than thirty men was permitted to pass. Un- 
der this organization, which was military in 
its character, we were required to remain to- 
gether, to obey the orders of our * captain,' 
and to use all possible precaution against the 
loss of our scalps and the freight and cattle 
in our care. 

^'The daily routine of the freighter's life 
was to get up at the first peep of dawn, yoke 
up and if possible get * strung out' ahead of 
other trains, for there was a continuous 
stretch of white covered wagons as far as the 
eye could reach. 

^^With the first approach of day, the night 
herder would come to camp and call the 
wagon boss. He would get up, pound upon 
each wagon and call the men to *turn out,' 



224 THIKTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

and would then mount his saddle mule and 
go out and assist in driving in the cattle. 

*^The corral was made by arranging the 
wagons in a circular form, the front wheel of 
one wagon interlocking with the hind wheel 
of the one in front of it. Thus two half cir- 
cles were formed with a gap at either end. 
Into this corral the cattle were driven and the 
night herder watched one gap and the wagon 
boss the other, while the men yoked up. 

*^The first step in the direction of yoking 
up was to take your lead yoke upon your 
shoulder and hunt up your off leader. Hav- 
ing found your steer you put the bow around 
his neck and with the yoke fastened to him, 
lead him to the wagon, where he was fastened 
to the wheel by a chain. You then took the 
other bow and led your near leader with it to 
his place under the yoke. Your lead chain 
was then hooked to the yoke and laid over the 
back of the near leader, and the other cattle 
were hunted up and yoked in the same man- 
ner until the wheelers were reached. Having 
the cattle all yoked, you drove them all out, 
chained together, and hitched them to the 
wagon. 

*'The first drive in the morning would 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 225 

probably be to 10 o'clock, or later, owing to 
the weather and distance between favorable 
camping grounds. Cattle were then unyoked 
and the men got their first meal of the day. 
The cattle were driven in and yoked for the 
second drive any time from 2 to 4 o 'clock, the 
time of starting being governed by the heat, 
two drives of about five to seven hours each 
being made each day. The rate of travel was 
about two miles an hour, or from 20 to 25 
miles a day, the condition of the roads and 
the heat governing. 

^^This, then, was the regular daily routine, 
though the yoking up of cattle was often at- 
tended with difficulty. Many freighting 
trains started from the Missouri river with 
not more than two yoke of cattle in the six 
that comprised each team, that had ever 
worn a yoke before. Many had to be ' roped, ' 
and not a few of the wildest, as the Texas and 
Cherokee varieties, were permitted to wear 
their yokes continually, for weeks. 

^^ While the bull-whacker's life was full of 
that adventure and romance that possessed 
its fascination, there were some very rough 
sides to it, though taking it all in all, it af- 
forded an experience that few indeed would 



226 THIRTY YEARS ON" THE FRONTIER. 

part witli, and in after years there is nothing 
that I recall with more genuine pleasure than 
life in the camps upon the plains during the 
freighting days. 

' ' In an aggregation of men such as manned 
the prairie schooners of thirty odd years ago 
there were some very peculiar characters. 
This was especially true of those old ^Desert 
Tars/ who for the time made bullwacking a 
profession and who were never so happy as 
when swinging a twenty-foot whip over a 
string of steers. 

^' These droll people bore nicknames sug- 
gested by characteristics or conditions, and 
there were few indeed who responded to any 
other name, in fact, I have been intimately 
associated with men about the camp fire for 
months and never knew their real name. 

^*A tall, slender person might be known as 
'Lengthy' or 'Slim'; a short, stout one as 
' Shorty ' or ' Stub-and-Twist. ' "We had in one 
of our trains ' Kentuck, ' who happened to hail 
from the Blue Grass State, also ' Sucker Ike, ' 
who was from Illinois; 'Buckeye Bill' was 
from Ohio, while 'Hawkeye Hank' was from 
Iowa. 'Hoosier Dave' was from Posey Coun- 
ty, while 'Yank' hailed from the far east; 



THIKTY YEAKS ON THE FRONTIEK. 227 

* Mormon Jack' was an old-time bullwhacker 
who used to pass himself off for a Mormon 
when it suited his convenience ; ^ Bishop Lee ' 
also played Mormon when we were over in 
the Salt Lake Valley; the man with red or 
auburn hair was invariably called ^Reddy,' 
^ Sandy' or 'Pinky/ while another whose 
facial architecture was of the Romanesque 
style would be called ' Nosey. ' 

''These quaint characters would place a 
'Wild West' comedy upon the boards without 
much acting. The costumes varied as much 
as their names. Some wore flannel shirts, 
some cotton of any and all colors, while oth- 
ers dressed in drilling jumpers. Their pants 
or overalls were held up by a belt, as sus- 
penders were unknown. One character that 
was with us for a year or more, was a man 
called 'Scotty,' a native of Scotland, and a 
sailmaker by trade. He used to mend and 
patch his clothes and the clothes of the other 
boys, until it was difficult to tell the original 
goods. His strong point was 'foxing' clothes 
with canvas which he always carried for that 
purpose. He would take a new pair of pants 
and 'fox' them with white canvas, putting 
large patches over the knees, around the 



228 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

knees, around tlie pockets, in the seat and 
crotch, until they looked real artistic. He 
usually ^pinked' the edges of his patches or 
* foxing,' and I have known the boys to pay 
his as much as $5 for ^foxing' a pair of heavy 
wool pants with duck. 

^'By way of entertainment, every man 
could play a part. One could tell a good yarn, 
while another could sing a song, and all could 
play ' freeze-out. ' 

The songs sang about the campfires were 
not such as are rendered by opera companies 
of the present day. In fact, they have gone 
into disuse since the men who sang them and 
the occasion that gave them birth, have 
passed into history. 

'^ Among the popular melodies of the time 
was ' Betsey from Pike. ' The first verse ran 
like this : 

^^ ^Oh, do you remember sweet Betsey, from 

Pike, 
Who traveled the mountains with her lover,. 

Ike; 
With one yoke of cattle, a large yellow dog. 
One full shanghai rooster and one spotted 

hog.' 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 229 

Chorus — 
** *Sing a Tu-ral Li-ural, Li-ural Li-a, 
Sing a Tu-ral Li-ural, Li-ural, Li-a, 
Sing a Tu-ral Li-ural, Li-ural, Li-a, 
Why don't you sing Tu-ral, Li-ural Li-a/ 

**The chorus, when joined by twenty or 
more bullwhackers who always carried their 
lungs with them, was indeed thrilling, as was 
the last stanza, in fact every stanza from the 
first to the last, 

^ * The last verse ran like this : 

** *The wagon broke down and the cattle all 
died. 

That morning the last piece of bacon was 
fried. 

Ike looked discouraged, and Betsey was mad. 

The dog dropped his tail and looked wonder- 
fully sad. ' 

** Another popular air of the day was: 

'** ^My name is Joe Bowers, 

I had a brother Ike ; 
We came from old Missouri, 

All the way from Pike, 
Etc., Etc. ' 

**A song sang by a California miner who 
went by the euphonious sobriquet of ' ' Sluice 



230 THIRTY YEARS ON THE EROKTIER. 

Box/' never failed to elicit encore. It was 
descriptive of his adversities and trials 
through the sluice mining country, and the 
last lines that I remember were : 

^^ ^I stole a dog, got whipped like hell. 
And away I went for Marysville. 
Then leave, ye miners, leave. 
Oh, leave, ye miners, leave. ' 

^'Then the boys used to sandwich in Irish, 
German and negro melodies, besides drawing 
upon national and war songs. Among the lat- 
ter, ^John Brown' and 'Dixie' were quite 
popular, but any song with a good, stiff 
chorus was the proper thing. 

*'A parody on the 'Texas Ranger' was also 
a popular song, though not so lively and in- 
spiring as the others, being lacking in a 
chorus. It was a sort of lament of a boy who 
at the age of eighteen ran away, 'joined Old 
Major's train,' and started for Laramie. 
They had a fight at Plum Creek, in which six 
of their men were killed by the Indians and 
buried in one grave. In his description of the 
fight he says : 

" 'We saw the Indians coming, 
They came up with a yell, 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 231 

My feeling that moment 
No human tongne can tell. 

'' ^I thought of my old mother, 

In tears she said to me : 
' ' To you they're all strangers ; 

You'd better stay with me." 

** ^I thought her old and childish, 
Perhaps she did not know 

My mind was fixed on driving, 
And I was bound to go.' 

^ ^ * We fought them full one hour 
Before the fight was o 'er. 

And the like of dead Indians 
I never saw before ; ' 

* * ' And six as brave fellows 

As ever came out West, 
Were buried up at Plum-Creek, 

Their souls in peace to rest." 

^'In this connection I may say that less 
than thirty rods from the place where those 
six brave bullwhackers are buried, eleven oth- 
ers lie in one grave, killed by Indians. 

' ^ The last time that I passed over the road 
at Plum Creek was in the spring of 1867. 
The railroad had been built beyond that point 



232 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

on the nortli side of the river, and the stage 
line had just been pulled off. 

^ * Bands of Indians were quite troublesome 
and as the little troop of soldiers stationed 
at Plum Creek had been removed, the station 
keeper had been frightened away, and the 
sole occupant of the place was a telegraph 
operator. I talked with him as we watched 
the Indians over on the hill and there was a 
picture of despair written upon his every 
feature. We told him that he ought not to 
stay and insisted upon his taking his traps 
and going with us. He wanted to, but felt 
it his duty to remain in charge of the tele- 
graph office. I will never forget the parting 
with that man. He was a perfect stranger. I 
never saw him before, didn't even know his 
name, and our acquaintance only covered a 
few hours, but there was something terrible 
in the look of anxiety that he gave us as he 
refused to leave his post. 

^^We were the last white men that that 
poor fellow ever looked upon. Even as our 
train pulled out the Indians were in sight up- 
on the hills south of the station, and that 
evening they burned the station, and nothing 
was ever heard of the Plum Creek operator, 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 233 

who, knowing the fate that awaited him, re- 
mained at his post and was massacred by the 
merciless Sionx.'^ 

^ '^ ^ tF * * TT TT W 

The frontier preacher had his share alike 
with others in hardship and adventure, as 
will be seen by the experience of the Eev. H. 
T. Davis. 

^ ' We said to the authorities of onr church : 
* We would like to go west and spend our lives 
in laying the foundations and building up the 
church on the frontier.' The way was at once 
opened, and in July, 1858, we landed at Belle- 
vue, Nebraska. This was our first field of 
labor. We had no church organization here 
at that time, so everything had to be made 
from the raw material. Notwithstanding this 
was the case, we really enjoyed the work. 

^'We shall never forget the first Nebraska 
blizzard we encountered. The day before 
was beautiful almost like a summer day. 
Mrs. Davis had washed and hung out her 
clothes. We retired to rest, the soft balmy 
air, like a zephyr, was blowing from the 
south. About midnight the wind shifted to 



234 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

the north and it began to snow. In the morn- 
ing the weather was freezing cold and the 
snow was piled in drifts many feet high 
around the house. We looked out and saw 
the clothes line but no clothes. We tried to 
find them, but in vain. They were gone. Not 
a shred was left save one or two small pieces. 
And we never saw or heard of them again. 
Our neighbors who were acquainted with Ne- 
braska blizzards said : ' Your clothes were in 
Kansas long before morning. ^ Our wardrobe 
was not the most extensive, and we felt keenly 
the loss. Since then we have encountered 
many a blizzard, and we are never surprised 
at the awful havoc and devastation that fol- 
low in their wake. 

^^ Another thing that occurred that same 
winter we shall never forget. Although 
forty-one years have passed away since it 
took place, it stands out as vividly before us 
now as though it had happened but yesterday. 
The thought of that thrilling event even now 
causes our blood to tingle, our nerves to 
quiver, our heart to throb, and a lump to 
come into our throat, that produces anything 
but a pleasing sensation. 

**It was a race for life. We had friends 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 235 

in Omaha and we determined to go to visit 
them. The Missouri river is frozen over in 
the winter, and of course, is unnavigable. 
The whistle of the locomotive had never been 
heard on the prairies of Nebraska. The only 
way left for us to reach Omaha was by pri- 
vate conveyance. We procured a horse and 
sleigh for the purpose. After visiting a few 
days in Omaha we started home. 

^'The day selected for our return was 
bright and clear. The snow was deep, and 
the weather bitter cold. The brilliant rays of 
the sun caused the snow in the road, on plain 
and hillside, to sparkle and glitter, and the 
whole country as far as the eye could extend 
shone like burnished silver. By my side, in 
the sleigh, sat my wife. It was our first win- 
ter in the territory. Everything was new and 
strange and wild, altogether different from 
anything we had ever seen before. The ab- 
sence of timber made the snow-covered hills 
and plains appear dreary in the extreme, and 
created a feeling of loneliness that cannot be 
easily described. 

*^ After we had gone a few miles, looking 
back, my wife saw away in the distance an 
animal. 



236 THIRTY YEAES ON THE EEONTIEK. 

** *What is that?' said she, somewhat agi- 
tated. I turned and looked. It was so far 
away I could not for the life of me distinguish 
just what it was. I replied: ^Oh, nothing 
but a dog from one of the farms by the way- 
side. ' 

*^But if it were only a dog I feared it. I 
never had any particular love for the canine 
race. And if that were only a dog my wife 
saw away in the distance I was extremely 
anxious to keep out of his way. So I urged 
my horse a little. 

* ' Reaching the top of the next hill my wife 
again looked back. Then she tucked the robe 
more closely about her. I looked into her 
face. She looked troubled and seemed quite 
nervous, but said nothing. I turned my head, 
and there in the road, away in the distance, I 
saw the same object. It seemed to be gaining 
on us. Again I urged my horse, encouraging 
him all I possibly could. A peculiar feeling 
instantly crept all over me. It was a strange 
sensation. My hand trembled and the whip 
quivered as I held it. 

* ' The fact had flashed over me that the ob- 
ject seen in the road behind us was not a dog 
but a buffalo wolf. The buffalo wolf of Ne- 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 237 

braska was the same as the giant wolf of Ore- 
gon. It was the largest species of the gray 
wolf, and often attacked and killed buffaloes 
and on that account was called by trappers, 
Indian traders and the early pioneers of the 
west the 'buffalo wolf.' These wolves, when 
hungry, did not hesitate to attack man. They 
were large, strong, savage and dangerous in 
the extreme. I knew very well if it were one 
of these that had scented us out, and was on 
our trail, and should overtake us, there would 
be no hope whatever for our escape. The 
only hope of saving our lives was to reach 
the village before we were overtaken. Know- 
ing how fleet of foot the wolf was, the hope 
seemed a forlorn one. I knew that not one 
moment's time could be lost — that my horse 
must be pushed to the last extremity of his 
strength. I tried to keep cool and not become 
frightened, but in vain. No one under such 
circumstances can keep from being fright- 
ened. 

' ' Silently we breathed a prayer to God for 
help. How natural it is to pray when in dan- 
ger. Under such cimcumstances all men 
pray, believers in the Christian religion and 
unbelievers. All alike at times feel the need 



238 THIETY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

of supernatural help, and at such times call 
upon God for assistance. If at no other time, 
when in great danger, we pray — pray earn- 
estly. 

^'Seeing the wolf was rapidly gaining on 
us, I spoke sharply to my horse, and plied the 
whip anew. Faster and faster he flew over 
the hardened snow, and faster and faster our 
hearts beat with fear. The snow clods flew 
thick and fast from the hoofs of our flying 
steed. To these, however, we paid but little 
attention. Beaching the next rise, again we 
looked back, and to our surprise the wolf was 
nearer than ever. I felt that the only thing 
to do was to urge the horse until every nerve 
and muscle were taxed to their utmost ten- 
sion. Our panting steed seemed to take in 
the situation, and if ever an animal made fast 
time it was our noble horse on that cold De- 
cember day. Again my wife turned her anx- 
ious eyes toward our rapidly approaching foe 
and every time she looked back the trouble 
on her face deepened. She said nothing. Not 
a word was spoken. Her look, however, 
spoke volumes. My heart leaped into my 
throat, and I was too niuch frightened to 
speak. 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 239 

*'Up one hill and down, then up another 
and down our galloping horse carried us. 
Again we turned our faces to the rear, and 
again were thrilled anew with fear. The 
wolf was only a short distance behind. The 
time had come when it seemed there must be 
a hand to hand grapple with the savage beast 
of prey. The top of the next hill was reached, 
and in full view, only a few rods away, rose 
the beautiful village of Bellevue. Descending 
the slope we looked back. The wolf had just 
reached the brow of the hill, and seeing the 
village, stopped for a moment, then turned 
aside. A moment afterwards our panting 
horse drove up to the parsonage and we were 
safe. A prayer of thanksgiving went up to 
God for deliverance. 

^^ Forty-one years have passed away since 
that eventful ride on the bleak prairies of Ne- 
braska, but that race for life is as fresh on 
memory's page as if it had taken place but 
yesterday. 

^ ' We have seen with our own eyes the buf- 
falo path transformed into the public high- 
way and the Indian trail to the railroad, with 
its fiery steed snuffing the breeze and sweep- 
ing with lightning speed from the Missouri 



240 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

Eiver to the gold-washed shores of the Pa- 
cific. ' ' 

One of the hottest, bloodiest little fights on 
American soil occurred at Beecher Island, 
seventeen miles south of Wray, Colorado, 
September 17, 1868, which Thomas Murphy, 
of Corbin, Kansas, had the honor of selecting 
as the place of defense. 

Forsyth's Rough Riders, numbering fifty- 
four men, made as heroic a stand as the de- 
fenders of the Alamo, and from their rifle 
pits on the ' ^ Island of Death, ' ' in the Aricka- 
ree fork of the Republican River, defeated 
1,000 Cheyenne Indians, in which their chief, 
Roman Nose, was killed. 

At that time the Cheyennes were a devas- 
tating horde that swept over the plains of 
Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado. Major 
George A. Forsyth, who was with Sheridan 
on his ride from Winchester, and who has 
since become a general, was given permission 
by that general to organize a force against 
the marauding Indians. This he did, choos- 
ing a small body of picked men from plains- 



THIETY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 241 

men, hunters and ex-soldiers from Ft. Harker 
and Ft. Hayes. 

Mr. Murphy recently gave me the follow- 
ing account of the fight. 

On the 15th of September our little band 
of troopers arrived in the valley of the Arick- 
aree and on the following morning at day- 
break we were attacked by a rifle fire from 
the Indians, who had us almost surrounded. 
There was only one way out for retreat, but 
Major Forsyth shrewdly decided that it was 
done for the purpose of ambush, and instead 
of falling into the trap, took position on the 
small island in the river. We used our tin 
cups and plates to dig rifle pits in the sand. 
Our horses were hitched to the young cotton- 
woods on the island. 

Roman Nose apparently had us in a trap. 
His riflemen were posted on the banks on 
either side of the island and poured a gall- 
ing fire into the rifle pits all that day. Lieu- 
tenant Frederick H. Beecher, a nephew of the 
illustrious Henry Ward Beecher, was killed 
at the side of Major Forsyth. Dr. Mooers 
was hit in the forehead and mortally wound- 
ed. Several of the most valuable scouts also 
fell and many were wounded. Toward the 



242 THIETY YEAKS ON THE FKONTIEE. 

close of the day Major Forsyth was wounded 
near unto death, but when merciful night 
came he rallied the men and gave directions 
for the fight the next morning. 

At daybreak the second day Eoman Nose 
led in person fully one thousand warriors on 
horseback, who rode up the shallow waters 
of the stream to attack the rifle pits. The 
charge was a magnificent one, but we poured 
volley after volley into their midst until Eo- 
man Nose fell and they retreated in con- 
fusion. 

A second charge was made at 2 o'clock in 
the afternoon, but there was no longer a 
great war chief in command and the Indians 
broke within two hundred yards of the rifle 
pits. At 6 o'clock at night they made an- 
other charge from all sides, but our men de- 
liberately picked them off before they set 
foot on the island, until the waters of the 
river were red with blood. The place was a 
very hornet's nest to the Indians and they 
witlidrew baffled. 

The casualties now amounted to twenty- 
three killed and wounded out of fifty-four 
men. Ammunition was running low and we 
were out of provisions, but there was plenty 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 243 

of horse meat, for our mounts had nearly all 
been killed. When darkness had settled down 
volunteers were called for to carry the news 
of our predicament to Fort Wallace. Peter 
Trudeau and Jack Stillwell volunteered. 
They skilfully ran the enemy's lines and 
brought relief seven days later. 

Meanwhile the sufferings of the men were 
terrible. The horse meat had become putrid 
and unfit to eat. The days were hot and the 
nights were cold, and there was no surgeon to 
alleviate the sufferings of the sick and 
wounded. 

Major Forsyth had given up hope of re- 
lief and begged us to leave him and cut our 
way out, but we said, *^No, we have fought 
together, and if need be, we will die to- 
gether. ' ' When relief came some of the men 
wept for joy. 

It was I who suggested the island as a place 
of defense at the first attack. It was second- 
ed by Jack Stillwell. 

A reunion of Forsyth's men was held on 
the historic island September 17, 1905, when 
a monument given by the state of Colorado 
and the state of Kansas was unveiled, bearing 



244 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

the names of all who participated in that fa- 
mous fight. 

***** ###:}{: 

^'It seems to me people were happier in 
Colorado City in early days than now/^ said 
J. B. Sims, a pioneer of the sixties. 

"At Christmas times we had shooting 
matches, a horse race or two, plenty of Tom 
and Jerry, and usually wound up the day 
with a dance at the Anway Fort and a supper 
at Smith and Baird's hotel. Often half a 
dozen families would arrange a friendly din- 
ner at some neighbor's house, and the hotel 
men would make a big dinner and invite the 
ranchmen to come in and enjoy the festivities. 

''The pious people who were averse to 
horse-racing would generally pitch horse- 
shoes and sometimes end the day in a big 
game of draw poker. There was not much 
money in circulation, and the betting on a 
horse race was commonly a sack of flour, a 
side of bacon or a shotgun. 

''No, we never hung the horsethieves on 
Christmas. Those festivities were held until 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 245 

tlie new year, so as to start the community off 
with good resolutions. 

' ' A premonition of danger warned me once 
of lurking hostile Indians on Cottonwood 
Creek on the morning of December 26, 1868, 
resulting in a preparation for battle that 
probably saved my life. 

"It was the day after Christmas. I y/as in 
the employ of the Beatty Brothers Cattle 
Company and was looking up some stray cat- 
tle near the head of the Cottonwood Creek, 
twenty miles north of Colorado City. 

' ' I had been riding through the timber and 
was about to emerge into the open when a 
premonition of danger came over me. The 
feeling was so strong that I loosened my 
Henri rifle from the saddle holster and 
looked to the two heavy Colt revolvers I car- 
ried about me. 

' ' Plalf an hour passed and while I had not 
yet seen anything, I could not shake off the 
feeling of approaching danger. Twenty min- 
utes more and sure enough, from out of a ra- 
vine came about sixty Cheyenne and Arapa- 
hoe Indians in their war paint, riding rapidly 
toward me. 

"I instantly wheeled my horse and rode for 



246 THIETY YEAES ON THE FRONTIEK. 

a rocky butte about half a mile distant. My 
horse climbed the butte almost with the agil- 
ity of a goat. As the bullets tore up the 
ground about us I led him behind some big 
rocks and then paid my respects to the ad- 
vancing war party. 

*^My Henri rifle carried eighteen shots. 
The repeating rifle being then unheard of by 
these Indians, was the greatest surprise they 
ever met. My first shot emptied a saddle, 
and then when they thought to rush me, two 
or three more went down. They could not 
understand the rapidity of my fire, and by 
the time I had emptied my rifle I had them 
on the run and out of range. 

^ ' They advanced two or three times during 
the day and I became amused and allowed 
them to come within easy range, when I 
would turn loose as fast as I could work the 
rifle, and scatter them. 

^ ^ Late in the afternoon they gave me up as 
bad medicine and rode away toward Gomer^s 
hill, where they killed a Mexican boy. They 
then swung back toward Palmer Lake and 
killed Mrs. Teeterman, who chanced to be 
alone on a ranch near the headwaters of 
Plumb Creek. 



THIRTY YEAES ON THE FRONTIER. 247 

*'From that day I have never doubted the 
existence of an unseen power which may 
warn us of approaching danger/' 

Antelope Jack, bronzed and grey, a grim 
warrior of the early frontier days, who made 
his home in Colorado City off and on for 
many years, would respond to no other name, 
whatever it may have been. 

No one appeared to care much for old Jack, 
but Jack had a history that would have made 
him an idol in certain circles, for in 1874 he 
was one of the fourteen men who fought the 
Battle of Adobe Walls in northwest Texas, 
one of the fiercest fought on the plains. 

Long before Napoleon signed the Louisiana 
purchase treaty, and while all the vast terri- 
tory lying south of it belonged to Mexico, a 
party of traders from Santa Fe established 
a fort in northwest Texas. It was of adobe 
or sun dried brick and had stood deserted 
in that arid region, almost intact, for perhaps 
more than one hundred years. 

In 1874, when the extermination of the 
buffalo had become a military necessity in or- 



248 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

der to deprive the Indian of his commissary 
on his marauding expeditions, a party of 
buffalo hunters took up headquarters in the 
adobe walls and it being in the heart of the 
buffalo country, others came, and it was soon 
made a trading post. 

The Comanches, Arapahoes and Apaches, 
ever jealous of their domain, formed a fed- 
eration and proceeded against the settlements 
of northwest Texas and Kansas. A raid was 
planned on Adobe Walls. The time set for 
the attack was early dawn, when it was ex- 
pected the men would be asleep. 

The men, not apprehensive of danger, were 
asleep with the doors open, but ^^Bat" Mas- 
terson rose early that morning and upon go- 
ing to the stream for vv^ater, caught sight of 
the advancing horde. 

The men were quickly alarmed and the 
doors fastened. Two men asleep on the out- 
side in wagons were killed. 

The Indians rode their ponies up to the 
heavy doors and threw them on their 
haunches against them. The men inside bar- 
ricaded the doors with sacks of flour and 
fired through loopholes in the faces of the 
savages, who numbered about five hundred. 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 249 

The battle raged all day and dead Indians 
and ponies were piled np to within a few feet 
of the doors. 

One yonng brave, painted and bedecked 
with feathers, gained the roof and tore away 
the adobe covering until he could reach 
through with his revolver, which he fired at 
random below, filling the room with smoke. 
He was killed before he emptied his weapon. 
There were only fourteen guns of the defend- 
ers and at times every one had to be brought 
into action to resist the renewed attack 
against the doors. 

Finally the doors parted until there was 
a wide aperture on both sides through which 
the Indians fired as they rode past, or hurled 
their arrows and lances. 

Fixed ammunition was running low, but 
there was an abundance of powder, bullets 
and primers for reloading shells. Men were 
detailed for this work so that there was a 
volcano of fire belching from the fort all 
day. 

Meanwhile, Minimic, the medicine man of 
the tribes, who had planned the fight, rode at 
a safe distance, urging on the Indians, saying 



250 THIKTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

the medicine he had made was good and they 
could not fail. 

Finally, late in the day, his horse was hit 
by a sharpshooter and with this the Indians 
lost faith and withdrew. 

^'I was only busy like the rest,'' was all 
Antelope Jack would say of his courage on 
that day. 

The massacre at the White Eiver Indian 
agency in Colorado, and the ambuscade of 
Major Thornburg's command by Utes in 
1879, was the last of the serious troubles with 
the Indians in Colorado. 

It was the cause, however, of a reign of 
terror on the plains, as it was thought to be 
the signal for a general uprising. 

When the news reached the C. C. Eanch 
on the Cimarron River, I was especially in- 
terested in the fate of E. W. Eskridge, an em- 
ploye of the White Eiver agency, who I 
would have joined within a short time, had 
the terrible affair resulting in his death not 
occurred. 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 251 

I have never met any of the soldiers under 
Major Thornburg's command, nor any set- 
tlers who were in the vicinity at the time, and 
the best account I have been able to get of the 
massacre is the following by an unknown 
writer : 

*'The White River Utes had been ugly for 
some time, and had prepared for an out- 
break. They committed many depredations 
among the settlers and cherished resentment 
against the agent, Mr. Meeker. Only an hour 
before the attack upon the agency by Chief 
Douglass and twenty braves Meeker dis- 
patched a message to Major Thornburg, 
known to be en route, in which he said : 

^^ * Everything is quiet here and Douglass 
is flying the United States flag.' 

^ ^ At that hour Thornburg lay dead in Milk 
River canon, on the reservation. The writer 
was cruelly slain and mutilated within an 
hour, and the messenger, E. W. Eskridge, 
who carried the note, was shot down before 
he had proceeded two miles from the agency. 

* ' The attack on Thornburg was made at 10 
o'clock on the morning of September 29. 
Wlien the news reached Chief Douglass by 
courier he at once proceeded to execute his 



252 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

portion of tlie plot. He and liis men went to 
the agency and began firing upon the em- 
ployes, continuing until all were killed. The 
women, who were Mrs. Meeker, her daughter 
Josephine, Mrs. Price, wife of the agency 
blacksmith, and her little girl three years old, 
ran to the milkhouse and shut themselves in 
while the massacre went on. After the bloody 
work was completed the building was fired 
and they were forced out, to be taken cap- 
tives. 

*^ Meeker's body was found a week later 
200 yards from his house, with a logchain 
about his neck, one side of his head mashed 
and a barrel stave driven through his body. 
Eight other bodies were found near by and 
four more on the road to the agency. The 
Indians stole all movable goods and packing 
the plunder on ponies fled, taking with them 
the captives. Through the influence and per- 
emptory intervention of Ouray, head chief of 
the Ute nation, and after troublesome nego- 
tiations. Chief Douglass surrendered the 
captives, who were taken to Ouray's home, 
on the Southern Ute reservation, and reached 
Denver in November. 

** Major Thornburg's command, consisting 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 253 

of one company of the Fourth Infantry, 
Troop E, Third Cavalry, and Troops D and 
F, Fifth Cavalry, left Fort Steele, Wyoming, 
on the Union Pacific railroad, and marched 
over the mountains toward the agency to aid 
in quelling the threatened outbreak, but the 
Utes struck before the troops reached their 
destination and also intercepted and am- 
bushed the command. 

''When the troops reached Bear River, 
sitxy-five miles from the agency, they were 
visited in camp by Chief Captain Jack and 
several braves, who were most friendly, and 
were entertained at supper by Major Thorn- 
burg. The object of this call was to size up 
the force and to learn the route to be taken by 
the troops the next day. They offered to 
guide the troops to the agency, but this was 
declined. 

' ' The next morning about 10 o 'clock, while 
the troops were in a narrow canon at the 
crossing of Milk Eiver, fire suddenly opened 
upon them from the bluffs on all sides. No 
Indians could be seen, but bullets poured and 
smoke puffed from behind the rocks. Major 
Thornburg was killed while in front of his 
men. 



254 THIKTY YEAES ON THE FRONTIER. 

^ ' Troop D was half a mile in the rear of the 
other troops with the wagon train at the time 
of the attack, and Lieutenant J. V. S. Pad- 
dock, in command, at once formed his wagons 
into a barricade and the other troops fell 
back to the improvised breastworks, where 
for six days the soldiers were besieged and 
nearly all their animals killed. On the 
morning of October 2 Captain Dodge, with a 
troop of the Ninth Cavalry, colored, who had 
been on his way to the agency, reinforced the 
beleaguered men, but his force was not large 
enough to aid in repulsing the Utes. The 
first night Private Murphy of D troop vol- 
unteered to go through the lines for assist- 
ance. The heroic trooper made the ride to 
Eawlins, Wyo., a distance of 170 miles, in 24 
hours, and telegraphed for help. 

' ' News of the plight of the Thornburg com- 
mand reached Fort Russell on the morning of 
October 1, and General Wesley Merritt im- 
mediately ordered a relief expedition. Four 
troops of the Fifth Cavalry started at once 
to Rawlins by train, reaching there at 1 
o'clock the next morning, where they were 
joined by four companies of the Fourth In- 



THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 255 

fantry, and the troops began their long 
march to the relief of their comrades. 

^^At dawn on the third day, with General 
Merritt ahead with the cavalry, the troops en- 
tered the valley of death and were greeted 
with cheers by the exhausted victims of 
treachery. The cowardly Utes withdrew 
when reinforcements arrived, and the troops 
were unable to follow them through the 
mountain trails. 

^ ^ On the road to Milk Eiver the relief party 
came upon the remains of a wagon train 
which had been bound for the agency with 
supplies. All the men were murdered, strip- 
ped and partly burned. After General Mer- 
ritt reached the agency Lieutenant W. B. 
Weir, of the ordnance department, while out 
on a scouting expedition, was surrounded by 
Utes and killed. 

*^0f Major Thornburg^s command thirteen 
were killed and forty-eight wounded. 

^ ' Although the government made a long in- 
vestigation of the Meeker and Thornburg 
massacres none of the leaders was ever pun- 
islied. The only action taken was the re- 



256 THIRTY YEARS ON THE FRONTIER. 

moval of the Wliite Elver Utes to a new res- 
ervation in Utah by an act of congress. '^ 

*M. ^^ ^b ■SL. M, ^ M. ^ 

w w w ^ TV- w •?? tF 

In conclusion, we do not have to go to the 
annals of the past, nor to distant shores to 
find heroes and heroines. They are in onr 
midst today. A nobler band of men and 
women never graced this planet than many 
of the men and women who laid the founda- 
tions of the state and the church on the fron- 
tier of the west. 

Some of them lived in sod houses and dug- 
outs, with barely enough to keep soul and 
body together, and for years had hard work 
to keep the wolf from the door. But they 
toiled on, undismayed by their hardships, and 
we today are reaping the reward of their 
toils and sufferings. 

THE END. 



AUG 2S »9W 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 






